OCEAN'S ELEVEN Director Steven Soderbergh Turned Down Offer to Return to Franchise
I’m a big fan of the Ocean’s film trilogy that Steven Soderbergh directed. That first film he made, though, was the best! While we await the next film in the franchise, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, we’ve learned that Soderbergh was given the opportunity to return to the franchise, but he ended up turning it down.
Soderbergh explained in an interview with Variety: "After we made the third movie, I felt like the series was very much concluded for me. When the studio approached me to see if I'd be involved in continuing the franchise, I told them no, because it just doesn't feel like a move forward for me. I'm chasing something else."
I get it, and I don’t blame him for wanting to move on from the franchise to develop different projects. He did some fun things with those first three movies and he got that story and those characters out of his system.
However, franchise star George Clooney has teased his return in a possible Ocean's Fourteen movie. Clooney recently teased: “We have a really good script for another Ocean’s now, so we may end up doing another one. It’s actually a great script.” When asked if the script was for a potential Ocean’s 14, Clooney responded: “Well… I don’t want to call it that… I mean, the idea is kind of like Going in Style. Yeah. George Burns and [Art] Carney, yeah. We're not quite that old."
If that film actually happens, maybe Clooney will be the one to jump behind the camera to direct it! He most recently directed the film The Boys in the Boat, which was a great movie!
As for the next film in the franchise, the film will be titled Oceans, and Robbie and Gosling will be playing Danny (Clooney) and Debbie’s (Sandra Bullock) mother and father in the story. The movie will be set in 1960s Europe, and it will be set in the same universe as Soderbergh’s Ocean’s franchise.
Executive producer Josey McNamara previously offered an update on the project, saying: “They’re wonderful together. The more projects even outside of that we can have them do would be amazing. I can’t really say much, but I think we’re just trying to do right by the franchise. I’m excited for people to experience it when it’s ready.”
The movie will be directed by Jay Roach, who previously directed Robbie in the film Bombshell. He previously said: “Originally there were some questions about whether it would be weird to have (Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling) together again after Barbie. But I think there’s just some pairings you want to see over and over again. It’s such a powerful, powerful duo, you know? And it’s and the suspense of will they come together; will they trust each other enough to team up? That’s romantic.”
Roach also said of Robbie’s casting: “Margot brought it to me as a kind of old-fashioned epic love story slash adventure disguised as a heist. It is a heist movie still, but it’s very much a love story. And we were both inspired by Hitchcock, To Catch a Thief but also Notorious. It just wants to be a big, big, you know, cinematic spectacle.”
The screenplay for the film was written by Carrie Solomon.