Chris EvansPhoto: Jesse Grant / Getty Images for Disney
Back in May, Netflix paid more than $ 50 million to acquire the distribution rights to Fantastic Beasts director David Yates’ Pain Hustlers, a film about a woman who is dragged into a conspiracy while working for a failing pharmaceutical startup in Florida. The Woman will be played by Emily Blunt, and the film has been presented as something similar to The Big Short, American Hustle or The Wolf Of Wall Street (say what you will about Adam McKay, but it’s a serious Big Talk for the guy who has made the Fantastic Beasts movies).
Now we also know (thanks to Deadline) that Chris Evans will join Blunt in the film, or at least that he is in “final negotiations” to join her. That’s what Deadline says, and although we do not know who Evans might be playing, we will bet that this will be a Knives Out-style opportunity for him to use his cool, nice guy charm for evil. After all, any start-up pharmaceutical company needs some asshole to be the outside face of the company, profiting from the hard work done by good – if increasingly morally compromised – people like Emily Blunt (or the character she plays).
Also, as we like to point out when this happens: Pain Hustlers wants to keep Evans in the Netflix family, since Netflix loves to reuse the same actors across different Netflix projects (almost as much as Netflix loves to fire people who don’t deserve the blame for any financial problems). Evans ‘second Netflix project, The Russo Brothers’ The Gray Man with Ryan Gosling, hits streaming on July 22 (after a limited release in theaters on July 15). And when we talk about Knives Out, we cross our fingers that he will appear in one of these Netflix sequels as a Hannibal Lecter character who must help Benoit Blanc solve a mystery behind the walls.
