Reeves’ return after two decades to be less dramatic

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This article was published 04/03/2017 (3377 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT was 22 years ago when actor Keanu Reeves, a freshly minted action star after the hit movie Speed, made a bold career pivot, signing on to perform the title role of Hamlet on the stage of the Manitoba Theatre Centre in the winter of 1995.

According to local industry sources, Reeves will be returning to Winnipeg this spring to shoot the movie Siberia (not to be confused with the 2013 NBC TV series of the same name, which was largely filmed in Birds Hill Provincial Park).

The 52-year-old actor, still a hot action star in the wake of the US$130 million gross of John Wick Chapter 2, plays a diamond dealer trying to sell blue diamonds of questionable origin in Russia, falling in obsessive love with a Russian café owner along the way.

Presumably, Reeves will feel more comfortable with his Winnipeg gig this time out. Not long after performing the Melancholy Dane, Reeves told this reporter he had initially felt like a “deer in the headlights” confronted by a looming truck with the word “Hamlet” across its front.

Siberia may be more in his comfort zone. The film is to be directed by Matthew Ross, best known for the recent feature film Frank & Lola, another story of obsessive love starring Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots. The script was written by Scott B. Smith (A Simple Plan).

Reeves is one of three actors making a return trip to Winnipeg. Sir Ben Kingsley, currently in town shooting the serial killer thriller Nomis opposite Henry Cavill and Alexandra Daddario, played the lead role of an alcoholic hitman in the 2007 film You Kill Me directed by John Dahl.

According to the Internet Movie Database, actor Stanley Tucci has also joined the cast of Nomis. Tucci played a passionate ballroom dance contestant in the 2004 film Shall We Dance opposite Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez.

The year continues to be a busy one for the Winnipeg film industry, which enjoyed a genre movie boom beginning in November with the back-to-back shooting of the First World War zombie thriller Trench 11, starring Rossif Sutherland, Incident in a Ghostland, starring French pop icon Mylène Farmer, the psychological thriller Behind the Glass, starring India Eisley, Mira Sorvino and Jason Isaacs, and Cult of Chucky, the seventh film in the Child’s Play franchise, starring Fiona Dourif and Jennifer Tilly, which wrapped production last week.

In that vein, city crews are also gearing up for a post-apocalyptic genre film titled Break My Heart 1000 Times, an adaptation of a young adult novel by Daniel Waters.

According to a report in Variety, actress Bella Thorne (The DUFF, Scream: The TV Series) is set to star in the film, set in a world in which the barrier between the living and the spirits of the dead has been lifted.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing