Tony Scott is following up his subway heist remake The Taking of Pelham 123 with another train movie, one which sounds like just as much of a throwback to the 70s. Except a very different kind of 70s film. Think Airport 77, but with trains.
Unstoppable is about an unmanned train that’s gone runaway… with a load of toxic chemicals! Two people – an engineer and his wisecracking partner and/or a love interest – must stop it before it crashes. So I guess it’s less like those 70s ensemble disaster movies and more like Speed 3. It’s even set up at Fox!
Scott is making this his next movie, and he’s working with writer Mark Bomback to get the script into the minimal shape it needs to be in order to become a Fox movie. Unstoppable, the latest in a series of modern movies with utterly forgettable, vague names, should start shooting at the end of the year. Will it be as good as the Oscar nominated (!) Runaway Train? Probably not. It might be better than Atomic Train, though.
The upside to all of this is that this movie is another firewall between Scott and his totally unnecessary reimagining of The Warriors.