From the luxury sports cars parked outside the famous Monte Carlo Casino to billionaire super yachts that line the final stretch, nothing captures one’s imagination quite like the glitz and glamour of the Monaco Grand Prix… And it’s these ritzy scenes that have inspired the upcoming prequel to the raucous Ocean’s Eleven franchise, which is set to star Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie.
As one of the oldest and most prestigious tracks on the Formula 1 circuit, the Monaco Grand Prix has become the most sought-after ticket of the entire season, where celebrities, athletes and the world’s wealthiest all descend on the French Riviera for a racing (and social) event like no other.
It’s the perfect backdrop, then, for this year’s picturesque power couple Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling’s latest project, which is set during the iconic race weekend. Ditching the pink and perfect world of Barbie for fast cars and even faster hands, the dreamy duo are teaming up once more for a classic heist movie with a twist.
Details surrounding the movie are still under wraps, but it’s understood it will serve as a prequel to the star-studded Ocean’s Eleven franchise which kicked off in 2001. It’ll be set in 1962 and be centred around the legendary Monte Carlo circuit.
Director Jay Roach describes his upcoming film as an “old-fashioned epic love story slash adventure disguised as a heist,” writing new chapters of the Ocean’s franchise and taking a different direction, exploring ideas of love and trust, and focusing more on the relationships between the protagonists to expand on the traditional heist genre that has become so intrinsic to the franchise. So I guess we’ll soon discover if there is actually any honour among thieves…
The 2001 Ocean’s flick was a box-office hit during its initial release, grossing $450m USD (663.5m AUD) globally to become the fifth-highest-grossing movie of the year. Itself a remake of a 1960 flick, the Clooney-led Ocean’s Eleven was everything a heist movie should be: slick and stylish with strong performances from an all-star cast at the peak of their powers. By all accounts, the movie was a huge success and three years later, we had Ocean’s Twelve. And well, here’s where it comes full circle…
The Ocean’s Twelve F1 diamond fiasco
As part of the promotion for the highly-anticipated sequel, a decision was made to plant a $300,000 USD (~$440,000 AUD) diamond to the front of a very fast, very low Jaguar (now Red Bull) F1 car during the Monaco weekend. For those who aren’t so familiar with the Monaco circuit, it’s actually a regular street every other day of the year, meaning lots of tight corners, a famous downhill hairpin turn and a lot more to crash a car’s front nose into.
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The diamond survived qualifying to make it to the main event, but on lap one, Jaguar driver Christian Klein managed to charge nose-first into the barrier that wrapped around the famous hairpin turn, wrecking the front of the car and mysteriously, the $440k diamond vanished into thin air.
“At that point, I probably should’ve been worried about the car or the driver. But, I must admit, my immediate thought was for the diamond.”
Jaguar PR Manager
It was a daring stunt to promote a movie, but certainly not out of place given the level of opulence of Monte Carlo on a race weekend. Even more bizarrely, to this day, the diamond has never been found…
Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling’s upcoming project will undoubtedly have a different marketing strategy to promote the film, but in keeping with Ocean’s tradition, the heist will leave you with a lot of unanswered questions. We don’t have much details on the film just yet, but we have it on good authority that filming could start as earlier as this month. We’ll keep you posted.