He’s unraveled mind-bending conspiracies and tackled terrorism on a transatlantic flight, but for his latest StudioCanal shindig, Hollywood’s favorite action veteran Liam Neeson is headed to Wall Street.
Deadline has the scoop, revealing that the Irish actor has come aboard StudioCanal’s Retribution, the English-language remake of Spanish action-thriller El Desconocido. Filming is due to commence in the fall, and we understand Chris Salmanpour and Andrew Baldwin are the brains behind the script. No word on who will get behind the lens to direct, but Deadline is quick to point out that it won’t be Jaume Collet-Serra.
If that name rings a bell, it should; for the past six years, the Spanish filmmaker has ensured Liam Neeson’s particular set of skills extended far beyond the Taken franchise, after recruiting the 64-year-old to headline Unknown, Non-Stop and 2018’s action vehicle, The Commuter.
As for Retribution, it’ll stay relatively true to El Desconocido – albeit with a change in location – in that the story centers on a “successful Wall Street executive who discovers on his way to work that a bomb has been planted in his car by an unknown assailant. He is forced to follow a series of orders throughout the day or else the bomb will be detonated. The situation is more dire because the man’s family is in the car with him.” Evoking comparisons to the Keanu Reeves classic Speed, Retribution will now cast the net in search of a director. A fall start date is on the cards, so we fully expect to catch wind of StudioCanal’s chosen candidate sooner rather than later.
Before he seeks Retribution for StudioCanal, Liam Neeson will be on our screens as The Commuter. Initially set to leave the station in October, Jaume Collet-Serra’s high-speed thriller recently relocated to January of 2018.
