Abel Fer­rara taps Ethan Hawke for the new thriller Zeros and Ones

To his cred­it, New York­er scuzz leg­end turned expat-in-Italy Abel Fer­rara nev­er real­ly let the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic slow him down. While many major film­mak­ers spent 2020 regroup­ing and plan­ning what comes next, Fer­rara got a pub­lic release for the loose­ly auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal dra­ma Tom­ma­so, unveiled his fol­low-up Siberia at the Berli­nale, and then pre­miered his doc­u­men­tary Sportin’ Life at Venice in the fall.

For any­one under the impres­sion that he’s going to take a break any time soon, a new report today break­ing the news of his next fea­ture tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Ferrara’s already got­ten the wheels a‑turning on Ones and Zeros, and by the sound of it, the ges­tat­ing thriller could be one of the more ambi­tious projects the director’s assem­bled in some time.

Today Screen Dai­ly has the news that Ethan Hawke will star in the film as JJ, an Amer­i­can sol­dier ​“sta­tioned in a Rome under siege, locked down, and at war.” In the film, the Vat­i­can gets ​“blown up” and it falls to JJ to reestab­lish glob­al secu­ri­ty through what­ev­er means avail­able to him, the clos­est a Fer­rara syn­op­sis has come to sound­ing like a blockbuster.

But who’s behind it all? That’s a fine ques­tion, made all the more com­pli­cat­ed by the article’s includ­ed director’s state­ment: ​“Zeros and Ones is a film of lock­down and war, dan­ger and espi­onage, Amer­i­can sol­diers, Chi­nese mid­dle­men, Mid East­ern holy men, provo­ca­teurs, diplo­mats, rogue ele­ments of the CIA and KGB.” Is it Rus­sia? Is it Chi­na? Is it [vague ges­ture to the Mid­dle East]? Some man­ner of vast con­spir­a­cy may be in the works.

The film will reunite Fer­rara with his Sportin’ Life cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er, fel­low New York indie main­stay Sean Price Williams, a favorite of Alex Ross Per­ry and the Safdie broth­ers. If noth­ing else, this will most like­ly be Ferrara’s best-look­ing film in a while, an apt upgrade for a script that sounds like it will require a grander scale than the last few.