Does a movie about a veteran assassin being hunted by a younger version of himself sound familiar? Well, before we had Looper we almost had Gemini Man, about an assassin who wants to retire but instead finds himself fleeing his cloned replacement. The film went through several drafts from 1997 onward, with one version set up to be directed by Joe Carnahan (The Grey) and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer under the Walt Disney Pictures banner. Carnahan recently tweeted about the “sizzle reel” he made back then to demonstrate what he had in mind for the movie. You may remember Carnahan as the same guy who released a sizzle reel of Daredevil as a ’70s-style crime thriller.
Carnahan’s vision for Gemini Man (video below) juxtaposed then-current clips from Clint Eastwood movies with Dirty Harry clips, resulting in a trailer in which Clint Eastwood is being hunted by the younger version of himself. Carnahan also tweeted that, at one time, they were “doing tests with Jon Voight to see if they could duplicate a younger CG-based version.” The thought of two Jon Voights is going to replace the Nic Cage in my nightmares.
Gemini Man never came to be. Instead Joe Carnahan made a movie where Liam Neeson punches wolves, and Clint Eastwood argued with a chair.
(H/T: Coming Soon)