Ah, the Internet. Scourge of tabloid newspapers, enemy of productivity and primary delivery system for gigabytes of naked people doing things to each other. It’s an endlessly fascinating subject for filmmakers and one that Murderball director Henry-Alex Rubin is turning to for his first feature since the documentary, hiring Michael Nyqvist, Alexander Skarsgard, Frank Grillo and Colin Ford to star in indie drama Disconnected.
Written by Return to Me’s Andrew Stern, the film will follow a group of characters whose lives are variously impacted by the Magical Interwebs and other forms of communication so prevalent in today’s high-tech society. So probably not smoke signals, then.
Skarsgard (yes, him again – he’s a busy bloke) is on as a former Marine whose marriage is crumbling due to financial and emotional pressures and who is driven to seek out an affair. Original Dragon Tattoo star Nyqvist’s tale is linked to his, as he’ll be a man the couple suspect has stolen their identity.
Grillo, last seen in Edge of Darkness and My Soul to Take, is a computer expert and single dad who is desperate to keep his 15-year-old son (Ford) away from the dangers he perceives in cyberspace. How well does that plan go? Not so well, as the kid is already dealing with his own emotional issues by pretending to be a girl online and chatting with a troubled fellow teenager. Yeah, that’s going to end well.
Rubin also has Brighton Rock’s Andrea Riseborough flirting with the role of an ambitious TV report who wants to break out of her fluffy news routine and looks into a story about a young male model that poses in the buff on the web. It’s all set to start shooting next month in New York.