Edward Berger turns down Ocean’s 14

Edward Berger won’t direct Ocean’s 14.

The All Quiet on the Western Front filmmaker admitted he was intrigued by the idea of working on the franchise but ultimately decided he couldn’t add anything new to it.

He told Deadline: “We were talking at that time, Brad Pitt and I, and yes, was I seduced by the thought of making something like that. I’m from a small place in Germany. I’ve never had those opportunities. And suddenly Brad Pitt and George Clooney and Julia Roberts and Matt Damon, I would be able to make a movie with them. Ballad of A Small Player was a hard movie to make, and I felt like, wouldn’t it be great to make a studio picture? The studio needs that movie, the stars want the movie, as does the audience. Everyone needs the movie. It’s a franchise. I can pay my crew. I can have fun with them. It’s a temptation. But deep down inside I knew it’s not my movie, it’s Steven Soderbergh’s movie. He invented that, beautifully. He made them, and I’m just following in his footsteps. What is new for me?”

While stars Brad Pitt and George Clooney tried to encourage Edward to join the movie, he ultimately ended up persuading Brad to join another of his projects instead.

He said: “I went to bed, slept eight hours, and knew, it’s not me. I called Brad because we had talked a bunch of times. I knew he was open to doing something, and I basically said, I’m sorry, I don’t want to do ‘Ocean’s’ and hope I haven’t offended you. But I have this great script [The Riders] that I would love you to look at because I think it might be a challenge for both of us. He read it in two days and called back and said, I want to do it. It’s the best script I’ve ever read.

“The one thing I’m sure of is that early next year we’ll shoot The Riders with Brad. The script is ready, the financing is there, and Brad is ready. It’s just a beautiful journey, that movie.

“The Riders is a real character piece. We’ve got, I would say, the biggest movie star in the world, making a real character movie and really going for it. In this film, we pick up his character on a journey that starts with him building a house. He’s a real man, man. He’s not like me. This guy can build a house. We meet him as he is building a house for his family, he’s the real provider, the real traditional man, and then he is on the journey to find his wife who’s gone suddenly. And all this manhood, all this masculinity just strips away and falls apart and all we are left with is a heap of a human being, a small human being with all his frailties. To dissect this person through Brad Pitt, I think is a beautiful task. To really see someone unravel and everything he’s relied on up till here as a character is suddenly taken away from him. And just the core of his being is left behind, and he needs to find what that is. I think that’s a great journey that touches on the history of Europe. We take him from Ireland to Greece, to Brussels to Amsterdam and back to Ireland. It’s a massive odyssey throughout Europe, during which he falls apart. And I can’t wait to see Brad do that.”