Emily Blunt joins Ryan Gosling's The Fall Guy movie
The film, loosely inspired by the Lee Majors stunt-performer-hunts-bounties-on-the-side TV show, is being directed by Bullet Train's David Leitch
Ryan Gosling’s movie version of the classic Lee Majors TV series The Fall Guy has lined up another jolt of star power to help take what is already, honestly, one of the greatest premises in the history of TV—Hollywood stunt performers moonlighting as bounty hunters in scenarios that somehow inevitably end up with them in high-speed car chases or falling through windows while on fire, etc.—to another level. That is, Deadline reports that Emily Blunt has signed on to the film, where she’ll star alongside Gosling.
Blunt has been prolific of late, appearing recently in the Quiet Place franchise, in Disney’s Jungle Cruise, and in the deluded fantasies of the people who just won’t stop fan-casting The Fantastic Four, no matter how politely we ask them to stop. She’s currently set to appear opposite Cillian Murphy in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, easily the most bombastically advertised movie we’ve ever seen about a theoretical physicist.
A film remake of The Fall Guy—which ran on TV from 1981 to 1986—has been in the works for more than a decade now, picking up, like tofu, many of the flavors of whatever era it happened to be in. (At one point, for instance, it was being pitched as a collaboration between Dwayne Johnson and director McG.) Gosling’s been attached to the current incarnation of the project since 2020; this version is said to be “loosely based” on the show, which starred Douglas Barr, Heather Thomas, Jo Ann Pflug, and Markie Post, alongside Majors as veteran stunt performer Colt Seavers.
David Leitch—himself a veteran stunt performer, in addition to his work as an actor and director on films like Deadpool 2 and the currently in-theaters Bullet Train—is directing The Fall Guy. The movie is currently aiming at a March 2024 release date.