Exclusive: Jon Watts speaks to Total Film (September issue) about handcrafting Wolfs for his two leads.
Brad Pitt and George Clooney are two lone wolf professional fixers whose worlds collide when they’re suddenly tasked with disposing of the same body. As one-sentence pitches go, there’s plenty in Wolfs to catch your attention. Thankfully for director Jon Watts, there was a similar response when pitching the movie to his two big-name leads.
“‘What if Michael Clayton got stuck with another Michael Clayton?” And [George] was like, ‘I get it. Let’s do it,'” Watts tells Total Film in our new issue out on Thursday, August 15, which features Beetlejuice Beetlejuice on the cover.
Having envisaged the duo in the leading roles since the beginning, he wrote the script after his successful pitch, tailoring the characters to the stars. “I will say when I gave them the script, I didn’t specify who would play who. I let them figure that out on their own!” Watts said.
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GQ
It is the laugh you hear first. Heh heh heh heh heh. Unhurried. Like he’s got all the time in the world to do it. Some of the buildings here at Château Miraval, where Brad Pitt is just now tumbling out from wherever he spent the night, cup of coffee in hand, are nearly 200 years old, and the laugh rings off the stonework: heh heh heh heh heh. It rings through the terraces of olive trees. It ruffles the stone pots of lavender and rosemary. It sends the literal butterflies alighting on literal pink blossoms into the air, up towards the Provençal sky, which is the same soft blue as it was when Matisse painted it. It echoes off the lake and the vineyards and the ancient chapel and the black Mercedes convertible, top down, that is now arriving, with George Clooney at the wheel. Black sunglasses. Black polo. Loafers. When he sees Pitt, he yells: Brother! And then you hear the laugh again: heh heh heh heh heh.
Read more. GQ – The September issue (US, France, UK).
• x017 Photoshoots – Set 01.
Check out the great behind the scenes video.
Wolfs Was Written Specifically For George Clooney And Brad Pitt: ‘It’s Like Two Michael Claytons’
Fresh from wrapping up his MCU Spider-Man trilogy to thunderous effect in No Way Home, filmmaker Jon Watts has ploughed his success into two major new projects. Before too long, we’ll see the Star Wars series he’s helped devise, the kids-lost-in-space adventure series Skeleton Crew. But away from the franchise world, Watts has used his cache to make an original crime movie – with two of Hollywood’s biggest A-listers starring side by side. Get ready for Wolfs, in which two lone-wolf crime scene fixers realise they’ve both been hired to take on the same clean-up job. What happens, then, when Jack (aka George Clooney) and Nick (aka Brad Pitt) are forced to work in close proximity, while finding themselves increasingly out of their depth?
That’s the question that drove Watts to write his screenplay, from which he also directs. “I just wanted to know what it would be like if two of those guys met,” he tells Empire in the Joker: Folie À Deux issue. “Would they kill each other? Or would they become best friends?” The partnership of Jack and Nick is absolutely intended to play on audiences’ existing associations with Clooney and Pitt.
Read more. Check out the latest Empire (UK) issue out now.
BP Gallery Update
• x033 Wolves – On set: New York City, NY (01-31-23).
• x096 Wolves – On set: New York City, NY (02-13-23).
• x015 January 14 – RTL France – Paris, France.
• x003 February 12 – Superbowl (BTS).
• x003 January 15 – TF1 – Paris, France.
• x002 Magazines.
• x002 Photoshoots.
BP Gallery Update
• x024 Wolves – On set: New York City, NY (02-14-23).
• x039 Wolves – On set: New York City, NY (02-15-23).
• x030 Wolves – On set: New York City, NY (02-16-23).
• x072 Wolves – On set: New York City, NY (02-17-23).
• x006 Total Film (’22).
• x001 Screen (’23).
• x003 De’Longhi (’23).
