Daniel Espinosa is kind of a big deal these days, but I’m not exactly sure why. He first put himself on the map with the enjoyable Swedish flick Easy Money, starring Joel Kinnaman, but followed that up with the horrible Safe House, starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds. Despite the fact that the film was mostly panned by critics, it did turn a healthy profit at the box office for Warner Bros., so naturally, the studio wants to hop back into bed with the red-hot director once more.
According to Deadline, Espinosa is in talks to direct Blood On Snow (though I’ve seen it referred to as Blood on the Snow as well) for Warner Bros., which has Leonardo DiCaprio eyeing the lead role. Based on crime novelist Jo Nesbo’s novel of the same name, we first heard about the project back in the fall, at which point DiCaprio was on board to produce. It’s set to be the first of a two-part story that will follow a hitman who “is given a mission by his boss to kill his wife, but he soon falls in love with her.”
Given what we know so far about this one, I’m not terribly intrigued. As I said, I don’t care much for Espinosa and struggle to understand why his name keeps coming up in relation to high-profile projects (Assassin’s Creed, among others). Easy Money was enjoyable but far from spectacular, and Safe House was just way too messy and all over the place to enjoy. If anything, it just proved that the director has no idea how to film coherent action scenes. I haven’t seen any of Espinosa’s other efforts, but from their IMDB ratings, they don’t look like anything worth checking out.
The only saving grace here, of course, is Mr. DiCaprio, whose involvement means that I’m definitely going to keep an eye on how the film develops. With an unremarkable director and even more unremarkable plot though, I can’t say that I have too much confidence in Blood On Snow.
Tell us, are you a fan of Daniel Espinosa’s work and if so, do you want to see him direct Blood On Snow? Sound off below!
