When the Danish film The Guilty premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, much of the audience exited the screening in a state of adrenaline overload or distress. Jake Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, felt inspired: He couldn’t help but wonder what an American version would look like, and he soon took it upon himself to find out. The end result, shot over the course of just 11 days, stars Gyllenhaal as a cop who’s on desk duty as a 911 operator when a frantic woman (played by Riley Keough) calls in to report that she’s been abducted. Then, she promptly hangs up. For W’s annual Best Performances issue, Gyllenhaal shares why he was so compelled to adapt The Guilty and recalls an entirely different anxiety-inducing experience: his early on-set encounter with Brad Pitt.
Tell me how The Guilty came to you.
I originally saw it as a Danish film, out of Sundance in 2018. I just immediately fell for it and thought, Wow, this would be so interesting in an American context.
Universal Pictures is officially delaying Michael Bay’s Ambulance movie release date two months from February 18 to April 8, 2022. Based on the 2005 Danish film of the same name, the action thriller centers on war veteran William Sharp as he reaches out to his adoptive criminal brother Danny for help to get $231,000 to pay for his wife’s surgery. The two head out for a $32 million bank heist, though when things go wrong and a Los Angeles Police officer is shot, they hijack an ambulance with an EMT and the dying officer as their hostages and race to find a way to escape the law.
