John Boyega And Robert De Niro To Star In The Formula For Netflix

Star Wars and Pacific Rim franchise veteran John Boyega will join legendary actor Robert DeNiro for The Formula, a new film from Netflix. Gerard McMurray, who directed the streamer’s Burning Sands as well as 2018’s The First Purge, will helm the project, which apparently centers on a Formula One driver who moonlights as a getaway driver in order to help provide for his family. DeNiro, who appeared in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman at Netflix, will producer the film along with Jane Rosenthal and Berry Welsh. The Irishman was the latest in a long career of collaborations between DeNiro and the Oscar-winning filmmaker.

Boyega has a number of upcoming projects, including Naked Singularity, They Cloned Tyrone, Rebel Ridge, and Borderland. DeNiro will next be seen in Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

While TheWrap, who broke the news, likened The Formula to Drive, the movie is an original IP and not based on anything in particular, making it that rarity among movies headlined by Hollywood A-listers these days.

Boyega captured the attention of audiences in Attack the Block but became an instant overnight celebrity when he was cast in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The experience wasn’t all positive for him, though, and unlike most of the other sequel cast members, Boyega seems to have pretty fully closed the door on a possible return to a galaxy far, far away.

“I’m the only cast member who had their own unique experience of that franchise based on their race,” Boyega told British GQ last year. “Let’s just leave it like that. It makes you angry with a process like that. It makes you much more militant; it changes you. Because you realise, ‘I got given this opportunity but I’m in an industry that wasn’t even ready for me.’ Nobody else in the cast had people saying they were going to boycott the movie because [they were in it]. Nobody else had the uproar and death threats sent to their Instagram DMs and social media, saying, ‘Black this and black that and you shouldn’t be a Stormtrooper.’”

Personal and discriminatory attacks on the cast were a big part of the narrative surrounding the new Star Wars films. Boyega and co-star Kelly Marie Tran were victims of race-based harassment by social media trolls, while headliner Daisy Ridley and others had hate thrown their way based on her gender.

The Formula is set to go into production soon for a late 2021/early 2022 release on Netflix.