With filmmakers, buyers, producers, actors and directors all packing their bags and crowding airports for Cannes, it’s going to be a very busy week for casting announcements as projects hope to find legs in the busy festival marketplace.
Just like the Nicole Kidman/James Wan announcement earlier, this one is a little bit buried, but THR reveals that non-stop character actor Mark Strong is now attached to “Welcome To The Punch” with James McAvoy.
The project has been on our radar since last year, when it placed highly on the annual Brit List, a collection of the best unmade screenplays in the U.K. The film’s from writer-director Eran Creevy and is a crime thriller in the vein of “Heat.” It involves a London detective, Max Lewinsky (the role we imagine is earmarked for McAvoy), whose old nemesis, an armed robber known as Red Diesel (which seems a fit for Strong), reappears after five years away—but it’s only the tip of a massive conspiracy. The script’s mostly very strong, a gripping cop thriller with a scope and a level of action that’s quite uncommon for the British film industry, and it seems to be shaping up with one helluva cast.
The film will be shopped in Cannes and will get moving quickly with a July shoot planned. We expect more names to be added very soon, particularly as the project grabs the attention of folks on the Croisette.
