Winston Duke, who is back as fearsome warrior M’Baku in next week’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, has joined Ryan Gosling in The Fall Guy, Universal’s big screen take on the 1980s adventure television series.
Bullet Train director David Leitch is helming the action extravaganza, which already has Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Stephanie Hsu rolling in the passenger seat.
Production began this week in Australia.
In a switch from the original 1980s show that starred Lee Majors, the story doesn’t focus on a stuntman with a side hustle as a bounty hunter. Instead, the script by Drew Pearce focuses on a battered and past-his-prime stuntman (Gosling) who finds himself back on a movie with the star for whom he doubled long ago and who replaced him. The wrinkle, however, is that the star has gone missing.
Duke will play the best friend of the stuntman. Taylor-Johnson is playing the movie star while Hsu is his assistant. Blunt is cast as a prosthetic makeup artist that has a romantic past with the stuntman.
Producing are Kelly McCormick and Leitch via their 87North shingle. Gosling is also producing, as is Entertainment 360’s Guymon Casady.
Pearce will executive produce alongside Geoff Shaevitz. Executive vp production Matt Reilly and director of development Tony Ducret are overseeing the project on behalf of Universal.
Duke became a fan-favorite playing the scene-stealing warrior leader in Black Panther, a part he has reprised in a pair of Avengers movies and again in Wakanda Forever, which is shaping up to be one of the biggest movies of the year when it opens Nov. 11.
Duke also starred with Lupita Nyong’o in Jordan Peele’s 2019 horror thriller Us, and appeared opposite Mark Walhberg in Netflix’s Spenser Confidential.
He is repped by CAA and Hansen Jacobson.
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