Ed Brubaker Took Inspiration From Nicolas Winding Refn for Graphic Novel ‘Night Fever’

Ed Brubaker has straddled the worlds of comic books and Hollywood for years as the co-creator of Marvel’s The Winter Soldier, as a writer on HBO’s Westworld and as an executive producer on the upcoming animated series Batman: Caped Crusader. Now, his time with filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn on the Amazon miniseries Too Old to Die Young has helped inspire a key component of his latest graphic novel, Night Fever.

The upcoming Image Comics title, which also hails from artist Sean Phillips, centers on a foreign sales agent for an American publisher who always wanted to be a writer. On a trip to a European conference, he can’t sleep one night and starts wondering the city, encountering stranger and stranger troubles as the night goes on.

Along the way, our protagonist meets what Brubaker describes as a “trickster character,” and that’s where Refn comes into play.

Brubaker spent four years working with Refn,  developing a film that never got off the ground, as well as working on Too Old to Die Young, the 2019 miniseries co-starring Miles Teller. Brubaker realized this character had qualities reminiscent the Danish filmmaker, so he decided to infuse him with some of Refn.

“It’s a character who likes to give big speeches and big definitive statements about life. I was like, ‘Who do I know that’s like that?’” says Brubaker with a laugh, noting that he learned a lot about filmmaking and screenwriting from the Drive filmmaker.

Night Fever is a change of pace for Brubaker and Phillips, who have spent a good portion of the pandemic era on Reckless, a pulpy detective series that now spans five graphic novels. That series is grounded in reality and history, with the duo researching historical photos of Los Angeles to get the tiniest of details right. Night Fever, meanwhile, is set it in an unnamed European city. The duo isn’t worrying about specifics so much.

“I really wanted to do something a bit weirder and less grounded,” says Brubaker, while Phillips, who is British, was excited to do something not set in the United States.

Night Fever arrives June 20, and The Hollywood Reporter has a first look at the series below, what Brubaker describes as a trailer (in the form of comic book panels).