Jake Gyllenhaal was on set yesterday in LA – he is shooting David E Kelley’s Presumed Innocent for Apple TV+ which will mark his first time doing scripted television for a streaming service. Jake’s been on TV before, nearly 30 years ago, in Homicide: Life on the Street. But that almost doesn’t count since he was a kid and it was one episode, and more about getting a start in the business. This decision, now, at this point in his career, says a lot more about how the line between film and television is virtually disappearing. There are fewer and fewer actors of Jake’s stature, A List, who haven’t done television.
Presumed Innocent is another take on Scott Turow’s book. A film, starring Harrison Ford, was released in the 90s. This is a story that seems well-suited to these streaming times though, to really draw out the conflicts and tension. Jake will play a married prosecutor whose mistress ends up dead and he’s accused of the murder. It’s a crime thriller but also a relationship piece as his wife, played by Ruth Negga, has to manage their family amidst the scandal and figure out if she really knows the person she thought she knew.
This… isn’t an unfamiliar plot. The star factor here, then, and the David E Kelley factor, are the selling features. Jake Gyllenhaal isn’t without his share of opportunities so the fact that he chose this one is interesting – what is it about this character and this particular version of the trope that appealed to him?
In other Jake news, he has a new movie coming out in April – Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant. Not a terribly original title but I am curious to see how Jake plays in a Guy Ritchie feature. I’d put Guy Ritchie on the same end of the macho director spectrum as Michael Bay. Guy may be slightly less “things go boom, grunt grunt punch” than Bay but the general vibe is there. A trailer for The Covenant is expected to drop some time today.
