Ocean’s 11 prequel director Jay Roach offers details about plans for the new heist film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. Steven Soderbergh’s all-star 2001 remake of 1960s Rat Pack film Ocean’s Eleven was a surprise hit when it grossed $450 million worldwide, a box office performance that paved the way for a pair of sequels and an eventual all-female reboot. Now five years after that all-female reboot, Ocean’s 8, the so-called Ocean’s franchise is set to find itself in new hands, as Barbie co-stars Robbie and Gosling have been announced as stars of a planned prequel, with Robbie’s Bombshell director Roach taking on helming duties.
Further details on the new Ocean’s Eleven prequel have been hard to come by since last year’s announcement, but Roach himself just offered an update in which he filled in a lot of information about the movie’s setting and approach. Revealing to AP that the movie is set in Monte Carlo in 1962, Roach went on to talk at some length about his plans for the story (via Lindsey Bahr/Twitter), bringing up some of his classic film inspirations while teasing a big shift in tone from previous Ocean’s movies. Check out what the director had to say in the space below:
The Monaco Grand Prix is the backdrop and there’s a big famous shipping magnate who has a yacht. It’s not inexpensive. And I wanted it to be old-fashioned. 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. We didn’t quite sync up yet on what the right budget for it is.
Originally there were some questions about whether it would be weird to have (Margo 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 the suspense of will they come together; will they trust each other enough to team up? That’s romantic. That’s why Notorious is one of the most romantic movies I’ve ever seen, because they don’t trust each other, and they need to trust each other. That’s the heart of what I want to do.
Is Romance Really What The Ocean’s Franchise Needs?
Soderbergh’s male-dominated Ocean’s trilogy is not exactly steeped in romance, and neither is the 2018 all-female reboot. Uninterested in lingering on love story angles, those movies are all very much heist films in the classic sense, zooming in on the logistics of planning a major operation, and unspooling the various complications that arise in pulling it off. The characters in those films are all incredibly cool and competent, and despite being very attractive, don’t seem to have a lot of time in their lives for anything resembling romance.
Bringing a strong love story into a new Ocean’s Eleven movie would indeed be a departure from the franchise tonally, but Roach and Robbie seem intent on executing this sharp right turn, inspired by a couple of Alfred Hitchcock’s more romantic movies. Whether it makes sense to add romance to Ocean’s Eleven may hinge on the chemistry between Robbie and Gosling, who it just so happens are about to display their rapport in the highly-anticipated summer movie Barbie.
But even if Robbie and Gosling are a dynamic romantic pair, it could be a big risk to depart from the tried-and-true Ocean’s Eleven formula by skewing toward the romantic. Roach assures that his Ocean’s 11 is still a heist film in spite of its influences, but mixing heist movie mechanics with lush Hitchcock-style romance might be difficult to pull off, and ultimately not the right way to steer the franchise.
