MIRAMAX Presents a TOFF GUY Production a Film by GUY RITCHIE
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MIRAMAX Presents A TOFF GUY Production A Film by GUY RITCHIE MATTHEW McCONAUGHEY CHARLIE HUNNAM HENRY GOLDING MICHELLE DOCKERY JEREMY STRONG EDDIE MARSAN TOM WU BUGZY MALONE WITH COLIN FARRELL AND HUGH GRANT Casting by LUCINDA SYSON, CDG, CSA Music Composed by CHRISTOPHER BENSTEAD Makeup and Hair Designer CHRISTINE BLUNDELL Editors JAMES HERBERT, PAUL MACHLISS Costume Designer MICHAEL WILKINSON Production Designer GEMMA JACKSON Director of Photography ALAN STEWART Co-Producer MAX KEENE Executive Producers ROBERT SIMONDS, ADAM FOGELSON Executive Producer ALAN WANDS Executive Producers BOB OSHER, MATTHEW ANDERSON, ANDREW GOLOV Produced by GUY RITCHIE Produced by IVAN ATKINSON Produced by BILL BLOCK Story by GUY RITCHIE, IVAN ATKINSON, & MARN DAVIES Screenplay by GUY RITCHIE Directed by GUY RITCHIE From writer-director Guy Ritchie comes THE GENTLEMEN, a star-studded, sophisticated action comedy. The story follows American expat Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), who has built a highly profitable marijuana empire in London. When word gets out that he’s looking to cash out of the business, a host of colorful, if entirely illegitimate figures scheme, bribe and blackmail their way to try and steal Mickey’s domain out from under him. THE GENTLEMEN also stars Charlie Hunnam, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, with Colin Farrell, and Hugh Grant – all under the direction of master filmmaker Guy Ritchie, who returns to the genre and type of characters to which he gave an indelible and unique flavor in films such as Sherlock Holmes, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch. According to Matthew McConaughey, a Guy Ritchie movie is made up of “language, punch, humor, sleight of hand, chin up, and double-dare-ya. Every character in Guy’s movies has a specific and unforgettable identity; you want to be with them when you’re with them. Nobody is boring.” “No one has captured that gangster tone like Guy, who really understands charm and character,” adds producer Ivan Atkinson, who also co-wrote the story with Ritchie and Marn Davies. “You never forget Guy’s characters in those films, and it’s great to experience that mix of action, comedy, and fun.” “Guy wanted to venture back to his roots for this project, and the cast he pulled together was phenomenal,” says producer Bill Block. I look at it as somewhat of a tribute to his past, with relevant themes and similar characters having evolved over the last two decades.” Ritchie came up with the idea for the film almost a decade ago. After he and Atkinson considered turning the project into a television series, Ritchie decided to return to his original conception of THE GENTLEMEN as a big motion picture. He explains the film’s origins as a work entitled Toff Guys – a reference to the British slang for someone from an aristocratic background, and who exudes an air of superiority – and what drew him to its ideas and themes. “It all spoke to my interest in exploring the meeting of disparate polarities in the English and American class systems. The characters have reached an age where they are magnetically drawn to the finer things in life and have become gentrified in their rather ungentrified business. They are, at their core, hard-boiled and have worked their way up the urban ladder. Now, they’re caught between two worlds, one of which is aspirational. And the things they enjoy are now out of sync with the business they’re in.” The title THE GENTLEMEN points to their aspirations, but as Ritchie admits, “There aren’t a lot of gentlemen in this equation.” 2 THE PLAYERS Assembling an all-star cast was, of course, a critical part of his process – and left a big, if belated, impression on Ritchie. “After finishing work on a film, you tend to move on to the next one, but when I watched the trailer for THE GENTLEMEN, I was reminded how impressive our cast is, and that it was a happy accident how these chaps all came together,” he remembers. A key piece to the success of this ensemble is how Ritchie cast many of the actors in roles that notably contrast with the types of characters they usually play. “There’s no one in this group of A-listers you look at and think, ‘Of course they’re playing XX (character),’” says Block. “It adds to the overall freshness and unexpected twists of the film. Guy’s characters reflect their environment, and in a crime-based world one must be seamlessly quick-witted, scrappy and resilient.” Ritchie’s central protagonist is Mickey, whose attraction to his increasingly upper-crust way of life leads him to seek an exit from his chosen profession as a marijuana kingpin. The role was originally conceived for a British actor, but the filmmakers eventually decided that making the character American created exciting and unexpected directions for Mickey. “It makes this a unique British gangster film about an American living in London trying to sell his business to another American, Matthew, played by Jeremy Strong,” says Atkinson. Upon reading the script, Matthew McConaughey came aboard and immediately had some ideas for the character. “Mickey is an American selling England to the English,” the Academy Award winning actor summarizes. “As we know, sometimes it takes someone’s romanticized point of view to show value to the things we have around us, and Mickey does just that. He moved to London twenty years earlier, is Oxford educated, and has infiltrated the upper echelons of the aristocracy – the toffs. He started developing marijuana farms with the idea that there are thousands of estates in the UK, and Mickey would rent their properties for a million pounds a year and build ‘skunk’ farms underneath them. Mickey’s toff partners didn’t have to do anything; he just needed their land and they wouldn’t even know what was happening. Mickey’s business grew to become an empire.” “Yes, sometimes the nuance of British culture can be lost on the British,” Atkinson claims. “So, when an American comes into this world with a fresh eye, that’s a big advantage.” But Mickey’s success eventually leads him to consider an even better way of life: retirement. “He’s ready to sell his holdings, for $400 million,” McConaughey continues. “He wants to get out of the game, for many reasons, but mainly because he’s earned the right to get 3 out of it. Mickey is ready to have kids with his wife and take long walks in the country. He’s asking a fair price for his business, but there’s no easy way out for him.” The marijuana industry is a world that fascinates Ritchie. “It’s arguably the new gold rush,” he says. “The product is recognized as being relatively innocuous and not too offensive.” Atkinson notes that the idea for two Americans – McConaughey’s Mickey and Jeremy Strong’s Matthew – heading up a massive marijuana business in the UK stemmed from the ambiguity of the industry in the U.S. “It’s legal in certain states but illegal federally,” he points out. “By moving to the UK, they don’t have to worry about that ambiguity, or about getting screwed over by Big Pharma. They know exactly where they stand and can be honest about their dishonesty.” As he makes his exit plans, Mickey relies heavily on the savvy and street smarts of his trusted consigliere, Ray, portrayed by Charlie Hunnam. “Ray is sort of like [Batman’s butler] Alfred to Matthew’s Batman – if Alfred was a twitching, OCD occasionally psychotic employee,” says the actor, who previously collaborated with Ritchie on the fantasy-adventure King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. “Ray is not your typical gangster; he’s very detail oriented and committed to Mickey’s success and to the growth of their empire. The idea of them letting this thing go, that they’ve spent a lifetime growing, is quite difficult for Ray. But he respects the hierarchy – the boss is the boss.” Hunnam elaborates on some of Ray’s unusual qualities: “Guy and I wanted Ray to feel slightly idiosyncratic – that he had some kind of disorder, maybe OCD, that was hanging out there on the fringes. He has a very significant thing about organization and order.” Ray’s sense of order serves him well in his dealings with Fletcher, an unscrupulous private investigator who’s been hired by a tabloid newspaper to dig up some dirt on Mickey, who had snubbed the paper’s take-no-prisoners editor Big Dave (“Ray Donovan’s” Eddie Marsan). Armed with what he thinks is some highly compromising information on Mickey, Fletcher drops in on Ray and weaves an uproariously compelling narrative that seems to give him the upper hand on Ray and Mickey. “Ray and Fletcher’s back-and-forth spans the entire film, which is a device that Guy uses to great effect,” Hunnam states. “He intercuts our dialogue with the story as it plays out in real time.” Hugh Grant portrays the sleazy investigator, who, he points out, “will work for anyone, but in this particular case, in this film, he’s working for the boss of a very nasty tabloid newspaper. He is hired by that newspaper boss to dig around, get some dirt on this prominent marijuana dealer, Mickey, played by Matthew McConaughey, and Fletcher gets up into all kinds of mischief, double crossing people and getting up to all that kind of stuff.” 4 “So, he sets about doing all that, and doing it very well. Fletcher goes through Mickey’s bins, tails him, bugs his phones, and builds a huge dossier on him.