We’re a little more than a week away from Monkey Man, Dev Patel’s directorial debut in which he also stars as an ass-kicking revenge machine. I am SO stoked.
Road House was a surprise because I expected literally less than nothing from it, but I have HIGH expectation for Monkey Man, driven in part by my love of Dev Patel (v. handsome, so tall, should be James Bond), but also Jordan Peele. He’s the one, after all, who rescued Monkey Man from the Netflix firehose of content, ensuring we’d get to see it in theaters. Based on early reviews, his instinct is correct that Monkey Man is one for theaters and hyped audiences.
But I did come across a piece of information that stopped me in my tracks this morning—Dev Patel is just 33. There is this weird time warp that happens with people who both get famous young and have been famous a long time, where they seem older than they are and no age at all because we’ve “known” them so long in the public sphere. But this really surprised me. How old was he in Slumdog Millionaire? 16? Don’t do math at me, I don’t really care, but I find myself stuck in the time warp where I accept that teenaged Dev Patel starred on Skins in the mid-2000s, and he’s perpetually 35 because he’s been famous so long.
Anyway, here are Dev Patel and Jordan Peele, along with the cast of Monkey Man, at the UK screening yesterday. I cannot WAIT for this one.
