In what could, with any luck, end up becoming the Miami Vice of the new millennium, Variety reports that Amazon has hired Drive and Only God Forgives director Nicolas Winding Refn to write, direct, and produce a crime drama series for its streaming service. Refn and Amazon have been in business before; the company distributed his arthouse shocker The Neon Demon last year, so clearly it’s okay with letting Refn do whatever the fuck he wants.
And the setup seems perfectly tailored to Refn’s hyper-violent neon noir tendencies: Titled Too Old To Die Young, the show takes place in the criminal underworld of Los Angeles, “explor[ing] various characters’ existential journeys from being killers to becoming samurais in the City of Angels.” The tone of the series is being described as similar to that of Refn’s Pusher trilogy, a series of stylish crime films he directed back in Denmark before making his international breakthrough. The presence of comics veteran Ed Brubaker—co-creator of the Criminal series and longtime Batman writer—as Refn’s co-writer and executive producer would seem to play up the grittiness of the story, but we’re sure Refn will find any excuse he can to shoot striking images of cool guys holding samurai swords in front of striking colored backgrounds as well.
Too Old To Die Young has been given a 10-episode straight-to-series order, and shoots in Los Angeles this fall. No one has been cast yet, but Variety teases “several big name stars” who are in talks for the project.