LOGAN LUCKY is a go

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Last time I covered Steven Soderbergh’s very first post-retirement project, Logan Lucky, I was driven mad by a minor bit of casting news and how it seemed to throw a wrench into what I thought the film was. Then, an even more minor bit of casting news sent me further off-track, and I was going to write a whole piece about piecing together the story from that, before realizing that was a dumb idea even for me. Thankfully, enough news has come about the film that I can put it all in one adequately-sized article.

The bit of casting news I was going to make its own article was that of David Denman. Along with Soderbergh, he’s a Cinemax alum, starring on the show Outcast, and he was cast in the film as the owner of a car dealership shacked up with Channing Tatum’s former girlfriend Bobbie Jo (presumably Riley Keough, although Katherine Waterston has experience playing two-named ex-old ladies). Presumably, he helps Tatum and his brother (Adam Driver, I believe) carry out the film’s central heist, of a NASCAR race in North Carolina, although the Hollywood Reporter article making sure to call him “upstanding” suggests that there may be more there. A little time passed after that and word came that Jim O’Heir, best-known as Jerry on Parks and Recreation, would be joining the cast as well. He is the second Parks and Rec alum to appear in a Soderbergh film, after Rob Lowe’s gleefully hideous performance in Behind the Candelabra, which means that it and Community are now tied in the number of their cast members who have shacked up with Soderbergh (c’mon, Soderbergh, put Gillian Jacobs in that Panama Papers movie to make things right). But that all went by the wayside when Soderbergh took to Twitter a week ago and started a wonderful series of tweets.

I don’t know why he’s dressed like a dictator of a small Asian country in that first tweet, but I prefer to savor the mystery. But another mystery, that of what the actors in this movie look like, was soon solved by a variety of set photos, as one would expect from a movie with a cast this star-studded. Here’s Chan-fried Po-Taters, apparently still afraid of losing his Jupiter Ascending goatee.

Here’s Adam Driver, rocking a prosthetic arm that will hopefully be outfitted with Furiosa gear in post.

Here’s Riley Keough, in what I presume is a deleted scene from American Honey thrown into this movie.

And lastly, here’s Daniel Craig, doing his best “Joel Edgerton in Loving” cosplay next to Driver as “Ezra Miller as Beetlejuice”.

But if you think something pesky like “we’ve started shooting” will stop Soderbergh from casting yet more hot actors, think again. Just today, it was announced that Sebastian Stan, star of Ricki and the Flash the Winter Soldier himself, has joined the film, playing, according to the Hollywood Reporter, “a NASCAR driver who is coming back to the sport after time away”. I presume he will be a key part of the film’s heist, or maybe he’ll help to tie the film into the MCU because maybe Soderbergh only came out of retirement because he really wanted to make a superhero movie.

It’ll be a long year until the film’s release next October, although at least Soderbergh had the courtesy to make a whole other film to keep us occupied until then (now if only HBO would actually give us a date for Mosaic). Either way, it’s wonderful that he’s back and to celebrate, I might as well bring this back for the first time in a little bit.

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