Frankly, I’m surprised that it has taken this long for Samuel L. Jackson to become President, but it has. Jackson is playing the most powerful man in the world in director Jalmari Helander’s Big Game, a film that simultaneously pits the President against terrorists and the wilderness. Today, the first still from the film surfaced, featuring Jackson, a small boy and the Bavarian wild.
What’s the President of the United State doing on the icy tundra you ask? Well, according to the plot synopsis of Big Game, terrorists have shot down Air Force One, forcing the President to flee in an escape pod, landing him in the midst of a snow-swept wasteland. There he runs across Oskari, a thirteen year old boy off on a hunting mission to prove his abilities. Pursued by terrorists, Oskari and the President must flee through the wilderness and survive ‘the most extraordinary 24 hours of their lives.’
This first image from Big Game comes nearing the end of the eight week shoot in Bavaria. The press release claims that the film combines the coming-of-age narratives of E.T. with the action quality of Die Hard. While I’m often skeptical about such claims, the director is the same man responsible for Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, perhaps the finest demonic Santa Claus movie ever made. So I think I will give Big Game the benefit of the doubt for now.
A sizable cast has also been added to Big Game at the last minute, including Felicity Huffman as a CIA Director, Victor Garber as the Vice President, and Ted Levine as General Underwood. But the stars of the show are quite obviously Jackson and Onni Tommila, who plays Oskari. We can hope that their chemistry will carry the film.
You can check out the first still from Big Game below and let us know what you think about the idea in the comments.
Big Game is set for a 2014 release.
