Benjamin Scuglia
Matinee idol Paul Walker is currently the apple of Hollywood’s eye thanks to the global box office success of Fast Five He’s using that newfound clout to jump-start a thriller by an up-and-coming writer/director that Walker would headline and executive produce.
Vehicle 19 is scheduled to shoot in South Africa in August. Walker would play “an unsuspecting traveler in a foreign country who picks up the wrong rental car and becomes tangled in a web of police corruption,” notes the Hollywood Reporter.
Filmmaker Mukunda Michael Dewil will direct from his own script, which has earned buzz around Tinseltown as a hot property. He wrote and directed the recent South African drama “Retribution.”
Dewil “has joined the ranks of South Africans making good in Hollywood with the likes of Niel Bloomkamp, Sharlto Copley and Gavin Hood,” boasts the Call Sheet.
“Fast Five” has revved its way to the top of the heap as the highest-grossing installment in the “Fast & Furious” franchise with more than $500 million bucks at the worldwide box office—and counting. Screenwriter Chris Morgan, who penned films three and four in the series, is already banging away at the script for a sixth film.
Director Justin Lin told MTV that he expects the full cast would return for the sixth lap around the track. “I feel like that’s appropriate,” he said. “The sixth one, I have a very good idea of the arena we’re going to be playing in. We talked about that stuff two or three years ago… Now we know the audience wants the journey to continue; I can sense the excitement with everyone that what we talked about is going to get to come to life.”