EXCLUSIVE: The UK’s WestEnd Films has closed a raft of deals on Australian filmmaker Richard Hughes’s Scorpion and unveiled a first-look image.
The action thriller, which stars Alex Pettyfer, Reda Elazouar and Clive Owen, has landed deals in Spain (Twelve Oaks), Portugal (NOS), Latin America (Swen), Greece (Spentzos), the Middle East (Falcon), Former Yugoslavia (VTI), Czech Republic & Slovakia (Foxx Media Group), Poland, Hungary and Romania (Mediasquad), Russia and the Baltics (Paradise), Bulgaria (Nu Boyana), Israel (United King) and Turkey (Vagon). HBO has also acquired Pay-TV rights across Eastern Europe.
A young police officer on his first assignment with a UK squad of Afghanistan veterans finds himself on an operation that turns into a deadly trap. The squad is confronted with an ultimatum: every 30 minutes, someone will die unless one of them confesses to what the unit did during a classified operation in Afghanistan years ago.
Producers are Cyprus-based Copper Island’s Matt Murphie, David Mansfield and Luke Bouchier alongside Yariv Lerner, Jib Polhemus, Patrick Hughes and Greg McLean for Australia’s Huge Film, plus Pettyfer and James Ireland produce for US company Dark Dreams Entertainment. The script is written by Hughes and Bennett Fisher. Michael Lawrence executive produces.
Rounding out the cast are Mark Rhino Smith, Joey Ansah, Ronan Summers, Alex Cooke, Luke Bouchier, Jake Ryan and Saint Heart.
The film shot in July in Cyprus and Bulgaria and is in post-production, with WestEnd revealing first footage to buyers at TIFF.
