Much was made of Steven Soderbergh's so-called "retirement", but he only ever saw it as a sabbatical, and this year releases a new comedy called Logan Lucky.

A heist film, it centres on two brothers planning a crime during a NASCAR race in Charlotte, North Carolina and has an impressive cast featuring Daniel Craig, Adam Driver, Channing Tatum, Seth MacFarlane, Katherine Heigl, Hilary Swank, Katherine Waterston and The Girlfriend Experience’s Riley Keough.

The heist premise and A-list cast might be reminiscent of Soderbergh's Ocean's trilogy, but it's how different Rebecca Blunt's script is from those movies that attracted him to it.

"On the most obvious level, it’s the complete inversion of an Ocean’s movie," he told EW.

"It’s an anti-glam version of an Ocean’s movie. Nobody dresses nice. Nobody has nice stuff. They have no money. They have no technology. It’s all rubber band technology, and that’s what I thought was fun about it. It seemed familiar to me, but different enough. The landscape, the characters, and the canvass were the complete opposite of an Ocean’s film." He continued: "What was weird is that I was working as a producer on Ocean’s Eight while we were shooting Logan, and it was kind of head-spinning. That’s like a proper Ocean’s film. This is a version of an Ocean’s movie that’s up on cement blocks in your front yard."

Channing Tatum as Jimmy Logan, Riley Keough as Mellie Logan and Adam Driver as Clyde Logan in Steven Soderbergh's 'Lucky Logan' (Michael Tacket/Fingerprint Releasing/Bleecker Street)

Soderbergh, who last directed cult favourite TV series The Knick, was only supposed to be reading the Logan Lucky script as a favour, but felt compelled to direct it.

"I was given the script through a friend and asked if I would recommend some possible directors," he explained. "Not unlike Bud Selig when he was charged with finding a commissioner for Major League Baseball, I thought that I was the right person to direct this film, and the search was stopping. I really couldn’t bear the thought of somebody else getting to do it."