American Assassin (film)

American Assassin is an upcoming action thriller film directed by Michael Cuesta based on Vince Flynn's 2010 novel of the same name. It stars Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar, and Taylor Kitsch.

Plot

A CIA black ops recruit, Mitch Rapp (O'Brien), is devastated by the loss of his girlfriend to a terrorist attack. CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Lathan) assigns Stan Hurley (Keaton) to train a grief-stricken but highly motivated Rapp how to thwart terrorist operations and hunt the perpetrators. Together they investigate a wave of apparently random attacks on military and civilian targets and discover a pattern in the violence that leads them to a joint mission with a lethal Turkish agent (Negar) to stop a mysterious operative (Kitsch) intent on starting a world war in the Middle East.

Cast

• Dylan O'Brien as Mitch Rapp
• Michael Keaton as Stan Hurley
• Sanaa Lathan as Deputy Director Irene Kennedy
• Shiva Negar as Annika
• Taylor Kitsch

Production

Pre-production

CBS Films acquired the rights to Flynn's book series in 2008. The New York Times bestseller, Consent to Kill, was intended to be the first film in a proposed series.^[1] Consent to Kill was scheduled to be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler; the screenplay was written by Jonathan Lemkin. The studio's last few films have performed poorly causing them to delay the production of this film. Antoine Fuqua was originally attached to direct^[2] with several names being rumored to play Mitch Rapp, including Gerard Butler, Colin Farrell and Matthew Fox.^[3] However, being a prequel novel, American Assassin provided the opportunity to start at the very beginning of the character, Rapp's, career.^[4]

Jeffrey Nachmanoff replaced Ed Zwick as director on February 12, 2012.^[5] At the time, Zwick was also writing the script with Marshall Herskovtiz but a more recent draft was written by Mike Finch in October 2012.^[6] A further director and screenwriter change took place with Michael Cuesta and Stephen Schiff, respectively, now on board as of March 2016.^[7]

Production needed to start by April 30, 2016 or the rights to the film would be reverted to the Vince Flynn Estate.

Casting

On October 10, 2012, Chris Hemsworth was believed to have be offered $10 million to play the lead, Mitch Rapp.^[6] However, a month later, it was revealed Hemsworth turned down the role due to scheduling issues.^[8] On May 10, 2016, and after being "courted for months",^[9] Dylan O'Brien was cast in the lead role with the "idea that O’Brien’s Mitch Rapp is college aged, and the hope is the actor grows as the series progresses."^[10]

Bruce Willis was in talks to star as Stan Hurley in September 2012^[11] but Michael Keaton was cast as Rapp's mentor on March 9, 2016.^[7] Taylor Kitsch joined the cast on August 18, 2016 as the "villainous operative."^[12]

On September 7, 2016, Shiva Negar and Sanaa Lathan joined the cast. Negar in a key role as a Turkish agent who teams up with Rapp and Hurley,^[13] and Lathan as CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy, who is to the Flynn novels what M is to James Bond. In the books, Kennedy is white, but "Lathan shone above a large number of actresses who tested for the job as an actress who could grow in the role as her character rises from running strike teams to the heights of power."^[14]

Filming

Principal photography began in London, Rome and Budapest in September 2016.^[12][15][16]

Release

Marketing

A first look picture of O'Brien as Mitch Rapp was released on September 12, 2016.^[16]

References

External links

• American Assassin at the Internet Movie Database