Kraven the Hunter star Aaron Taylor-Johnson has been cast in Fuze, an upcoming heist film from Hell or High Water director David Mackenzie. The film, from a script by Ben Hopkins (Inside), “opens on the discovery of an unexploded World War II bomb in a London construction site, sparking a mass evacuation – the perfect cover for a heist,” according to the official synopsis (via Variety, who first reported Taylor-Johnson’s casting). Anton is producing the film, and plans to shop it to the European Film Market for distribution.
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No word yet on when production will start on the movie. Mackenzie has Relay, which stars Lily James, Riz Ahmed, and Sam Worthington, also in his production queue. Taylor-Johnson has a big year coming up, too; besides Kraven, he also has The Fall Guy (with Ryan Gosling) and Nosferatu (with Bill Skarsgård) coming soon.
“Tension is one of the purest emotions that cinema can create. I had the idea of combining all the high stakes of an unexploded bomb with that of a bank robbery — clashing these two genres to create as much pressure as possible — in a context that feels as real as possible,” Mackenzie told Variety. “Ben Hopkins took those ingredients and cooked up the compelling script that we are now taking into production.”
The release also included comments from a number of other producers, including Gillian Berrie, Sebastien Raybaud, and Callum Grant.
“Together, David Mackenzie and [director of photography] Giles Nuttgens are dynamos. Just add Aaron Taylor-Johnson and we have the Midas touch for this whirlwind movie,” Berrie said. “I cannot wait!”
Added Raybaud and Grant, “David is uniquely talented at pairing large-scale filmmaking with truly unique characters. ‘Fuze’ melds the relentless tension of a bomb movie to the heist genre. Buckle up!”
Joining Taylor-Johnson in the Kraven movie, coming this summer, are Oscar winner Ariana DeBose (West Side Story) as Calypso; Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus) as Kraven’s half-brother, Dmitri Smerdyakov, who in the comics is the masked master of disguise the Chameleon; and Oscar winner Russell Crowe (Gladiator) as Kraven and Dmitri’s father, Nikolai Kravinoff.
Per the film’s official synopsis, “Kraven the Hunter is the visceral story about how and why one of Marvel’s most iconic villains came to be. Set before his notorious vendetta with Spider-Man, Aaron Taylor-Johnson stars as the titular character in the R-rated film.”
