Jude Law will star in an untitled crime film about a getaway driver, developed with writer Zach Baylin, the same writer behind the Netflix miniseries Black Rabbit. The project was announced at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival this week during a keynote presentation by Riff Raff Entertainment co-founder Ben Jackson and TV head Katie Sinclair.
According to Variety, Jackson launched Riff Raff with Law in 2017. The production company is developing two projects with Baylin simultaneously, one a film and one a television series, though details on the TV project remain undisclosed.
Jackson described the film's premise simply at the festival. "We've got a film idea about a getaway driver who wants to get from A to B to C, and there's a lot of things in his way," he told the audience.
The concept grew directly out of Law's work on The Order, his 2024 crime thriller in which he played FBI agent Terry Husk tracking a neo-Nazi group led by a character played by Nicholas Hoult. That film featured extended car chase sequences, and Law reportedly found the experience enjoyable. As Jackson explained at Karlovy Vary, "We had a lot of car chases in that, and he had a lot of fun doing it, so when he came out of that, we brainstormed an idea, and Zach's now written a pretty great script."
Sinclair spoke to the scale the project represents for Riff Raff as a company. "I think it's really exciting because Jude hasn't really done action like that before. I think it's a real example of his range as an actor, but also for us as a company. It moves us into a much bigger scale of project, but it still feels very character driven and anchored.... [It] sets it apart from other movies in the genre, and so we're always looking for the best in class, most distinctive version of each genre."
The film will be produced by Riff Raff Entertainment. No title has been confirmed, and no additional plot details have been released beyond the getaway driver premise.
Riff Raff currently has 50 projects in various stages of development, according to Deadline. Sinclair said approximately 30 of those are fully developed and out to financiers, broken down as around 15 films and 15 television projects. The company employs seven full-time staff members.
Jackson was direct about what kind of films Riff Raff wants to make. "It's not about making a film that just goes straight to streaming. That is key for us," he said. On the television side, Sinclair said the company targets the high-end market. "No disrespect to it, but I think whether in the UK and U.S. buyers see us and see a project from us, they'll expect it to have an element of elevation to it and be in that kind of high-end space," she said.
Sinclair also revealed at the festival that Riff Raff is developing a UK-Portuguese co-production feature with director Laura Carreira, following Carreira's debut film On Falling. "That's an exciting one because it's a UK-Portuguese co-production," Sinclair said. "So we're partnering with a local production services company in Portugal, but also the story is set in Portugal. We obviously want it to be authentic, so we'd want that producer to be involved creatively, as well as just providing physical services."
The Karlovy Vary industry forum runs through July 9.
