Tradecraft: Besson's EuropaCorp Has Three Days To Kill

Deadline reports that Luc Besson's EuropaCorp, the company that's almost single-handedly revived the Eurospy genre with mid-budget actioners like Taken and The Transporter, has struck a deal with Relativity Media to co-produce and co-finance their next neo-Eurospy title, Three Days to Kill. Written by Besson and Adi Hasak (his From Paris With Love co-writer), the trade blog describes it as "an action tale with a sense of humor." It sounds so bonkers, even for the Eurospy subgenre, that I think I'd better repeat their plot description verbatim: "It’s about Secret Service Agent Ethan Runner who discovers he’s dying and decides to retire in order to reconnect with his estranged family but is offered access to an experimental drug that could save his life but has hallucinatory side-effects." That's what I love about these EuropaCorp movies. They combine cliche with originality in perfect doses. They start out sounding so run-of-the-mill ("A disgraced secret agent has to save the President's daughter..."), only to throw out some wonderfully ludicrous twist ("...in space!"). In this case, that retiring agent trying to reconnect with his family part sounds kind of trite, and then they through in hallucinogens! Just like the wilder Eurospies of old. I can't wait to see the result... and who they cast. I'd sure love to see Pierce Brosnan in one of these movies...