The Wages of Fear follows a team of under-the-radar specialists who have just twenty-four hours to get two trucks filled with explosive nitroglycerine across the desert, to stop a disaster of mammoth proportions. The remake of the 1950s French classic was filmed in Marrakech, Morrocco to find the right desert environment and was released on Netflix on March 29, 2024.
According to atozfilminglocation, the new adaptation of the classic thriller was filmed in and around Marrakech, Morocco. A look at the teasers for the film reveals a lot of footage taking place in the desert, and Marrakech is the perfect area for filming this movie, as it has plenty of desert for a blockbuster film such as this to be shot in.
With sweeping drone shots of the wide open roads, and gas explosions leaping into the sky, the desert from Marrakech to the Merzouga sand dunes was utilized to provide a stunning backdrop for this high-octane thriller.
Who produced and directed the film?
The producer, director, and writer of the remake is Julien Leclercq, and if the name sounds familiar, you might remember his work on Ganglands in 2021. Leclercq and Netflix have worked together on other projects too, including two films, 2020’s Earth and Blood and 2021’s Sentinelle.
A remake of the film was originally considered as far back as 2015 with Ben Wheatley in the director’s chair, but the idea was left in production limbo and did not move any further forward. However, with there being a resurgence in taking some classic films, and re-purposing them for streaming platforms, the movie would once again get some traction and in April 2023, it was announced by Netflix that the film was underway.
Is it a remake?
Netflix’s The Wages of Fear is a remake of the original 1953 classic of the same name directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, considered to be one of the greatest thrillers of all time.
However, it was also filmed again in 1977, this time by William Friedkin, probably most well-known for his work on The Exorcist. Although long since re-evaluated, Friedkin’s film, released under the title Sorcerer, did not do well, flopping at the box office, and could not match the box office runaways also released in 1977, such as Star Wars. It has since fallen out of movie memory, but has managed to find an audience today that considers the film to be a triumph often considered better than the French original.
The Wages of Fear was originally a book written in 1950 by French author Georges Arnaud, who wrote the novel with the translated title of The Wages of Fear. Only three years after the publication of the book, the first film version was produced.
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