Nicolas Winding Refn teaming with Bond writers for Tokyo-set thriller

The project is rumoured to be the Danish director's long-gestating Valhalla Rising prequel

'Drive' director Nicolas Winding Refn (Getty)

Nicolas Winding Refn - director of the acclaimed thriller Drive (and the not-so-acclaimed thriller Only God Forgives) - is teaming up with 007 scriptwriting duo Neal Purvis and Robert Wade for his next project.

Despite it being early days, Deadline reports that it's going to be an action thriller set in Tokyo - which harks back to the Danish filmmaker's comments to Collider suggesting he wants to make a sequel-of-sorts to Valhalla Rising involving Mads Mikkelsen's lead character; a spy film titled The Avenging Silence, he stated that it would go back to "the origins of the character."

Refn already has a working relationship with both Purvis and Wade who have scripted Bond films since The World Is Not Enough (1999) right through to Spectre (2015) - the trio are working together on Amazon Studios' remake of sci-fi classic Barbarella which is still in the early development stages.

Refn's next film The Neon Demon will be released later this year. Starring Keanu Reeves, Elle Fanning and regular collaborator Christina Hendricks, the horror-thriller follows an aspiring model (Fanning) whose beauty is devoured by a group of beauty-obsessed women who will do anything to take what she has.