“I don’t want to end up like Bonnie and Clyde,” Desmond Dekker and the Aces sang in their 1969 reggae hit ‘Israelites’. Unless it’s in the movies. Arthur Penn’s 1967 film Bonnie And Clyde, which starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway as Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, broke boundaries to expand the gangster movie genre and kickstart the Hollywood New Wave. Now their story is getting told again in director Kiké Maillo’s Love Is A Gun, with Chloë Grace Moretz and Jack O’Connell attached to star.
Love Is a Gun is based on Jeff Guinn’s bestselling book Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story Of Bonnie And Clyde, and the screenplay was written by Shelton Turner (Up in the Air), with revisions by Johnny Newman (Narcos).
“We are excited to reintroduce the iconic story of Bonnie and Clyde. Their story remains ubiquitous in popular culture across the globe, yet few in this generation know the details of their intimate love affair and the circumstances that led to their notorious crime spree that captured the imagination of the world in their time,” producers Marissa McMahon and Ashley Schlaifer told Variety in a joint statement. “Kike, Chloë and Jack are completely in sync about the character-driven approach we will be taking, and we feel lucky to have a creative team of this high caliber leading us forward.”
Maillo’s feature debut, Eva, was nominated for twelve Goya Awards, and won three, including Best New Director. He most recently directed the Spanish-language action movie, Toro.
“We rob banks,” Parker explained in the original Bonnie And Clyde. Bonnie and Clyde met in Texas in January, 1930. Bonnie was 19 and Clyde was 21. Their gang included Clyde’s brother Ivan M. “Buck” Barrow, played by Gene Hackman in the film, who was granted a full pardon by the governor and released from the Texas State Prison on March 23, 1933, only to join his up with his brother’s gang. The gang also included Buck’s wife Blanche, played by Estelle Parsons and C.W. Moss, played by Michael J. Pollard.
The Barrow Gang robbed banks throughout the Midwest until Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death by officers in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934. They were believed to have committed 13 murders.
In February, Netflix signed on to distribute The Highwaymen, which will star Kevin Costner as Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, and Woody Harrelson as his partner Maney Gault, who came out of retirement to nab the Barrow Gang.
Love Is A Gun is set to begn production in early 2019.