By Did you think that The Expendables 2 was going to be your only chance to see Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger paired up like a fine red wine and shooting dudes in the face? Pah! The Dynamic Duo of Dudes Duking it Out have just begun shooting The Tomb, directed by Mikael Håfström, director of the thoroughly-crappy The Rite and the fantastic 1408. I’m actually kind of pumped for the film reading the plot description, which you can see in full in the press release after the jump.
Stallone plays Breslin, “the world’s foremost authority on structural security,” who is framed and jailed in a high-tech prison known as The Tomb, whose security he designed himself. He goes up against Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger), the moral heart and soul of the prison population. I’d imagine they have to team up against the corrupt warden (Jim Caviezel) and its probably-sadistic head guard (Vinnie Jones). I say “probably” because Vinnie Jones doesn’t exactly have a history of playing lovable chaps that enjoy a quiet cup of tea in the morning, unless “quiet cup of tea” is some sort of British slang for “beating a dude’s head in with your feet.”
At present, The Tomb has no precise release date, though it’s a fairly good bet to suggest you’ll be seeing Stallone and Schwarzenegger throw down Oz-style sometime in 2013.
PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHY UNDERWAY ON
THE TOMB
Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson,
Jim Caviezel, Amy Ryan, Vincent D’Onofrio, Vinnie Jones, Sam Neil
Lead Cast
Mikael Håfström directs the action-thriller now shooting on location in New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS, LA MAY 10 – Production is underway on Summit Entertainment’s The Tomb. Directed by Mikael Håfström, the action-thriller is an Emmett-Furla Films/Mark Canton production. The producers are Atmosphere Entertainment’s chairman Mark Canton, Randall Emmett, George Furla, Robbie Brenner and Kevin King-Templeton. Co-financed by Emmett-Furla Films and Summit Entertainment, The Tomb is being filmed on location in the New Orleans area. Summit Entertainment, a LIONSGATE company, holds worldwide distribution rights and will release the motion picture in North America.
Written by Miles Chapman for the screen, with a rewrite by Jason Keller, The Tomb follows Ray Breslin (Stallone), the world’s foremost authority on structural security. He’s analyzed nearly every high security prison. After being framed by persons unknown, all of Breslin’s ingenuity and expertise are about to be put to work in the most challenging test he’s ever faced: escaping from a high-tech prison facility that’s design is based on his own protocols.
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Emil Rottmayer,a complex inmate with multiple shades of gray. He’s the guy who fights to keep the prisoners from losing their humanity in their darkest hour as they struggle together to stay alive.
Jim Caviezel plays Hobbes, the warden of the Tomb. This is the type of prison facility that deals with inmates that no government wants on its books. The lead guard of the maximum-security facility, Drake, is played by English actor and retired footballer Vinnie Jones.
Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson plays Hush, Ray Breslin’s right-hand man and high-technology expert. Buttoned-down with street lurking just below the surface, Hush is aptly named because when he speaks, it is just above a whisper…but it’s a whisper with attitude and edge that can turn from soft to drop dead serious in the blink of an eye. Vincent D’Onofrio plays Lester Clark, Breslin’s business partner and CEO of B&C Security, their independent security company hired by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to test the integrity of their maximum-security facilities nationwide. Amy Ryan plays Abigail Ross, jack-of-all trades and one of Beslin’s closest confidants at B&C Security. Sam Neil is cast as Dr. Emil Kaikev, the prison doctor embedded within the Tomb, who is sympathetic to Breslin’s plight.
Håfström’s previous writing/directing credits in his native Sweden include: the gripping coming of age drama Evil, which was nominated for an Academy Award® in 2004 for Best Foreign Language film; the thriller Drowning Ghost; and the drama Days Like This, which won Sweden’s Guldbagge Award for Best Screenplay. His films have been invited to festivals around the world and, at home, Håfström has received multiple Guldbagge nominations, with Evilwinning the Award for Best Direction and Best Screenplay.
The behind-the scenes filmmaking team of The Tombincludes director of photography Brendan Galvin (Immortals, Behind Enemy Lines, Flight of the Phoenix), production designer Barry Chusid (Source Code, 2012, Aliens in the Attic, The Day After Tomorrow) and costume designer Lizz Wolf (The Expendables and The Expendables 2, Rambo, Dreamgirls, Suspect Zero, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl, Armageddon, Traffic).
Special effects are supervised by Michael Lantieri (Alice in Wonderland, Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, The Hulk, Minority Report, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) and visual effects are supervised by Chris Wells (300, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Live Free or Die Hard). Elliot Greenberg (Chronicle) is editing. The sound mixer is Richard Schexnayder (Red, The Expendables, Jonah Hex) and stunts are coordinated by Noon Orsatti (The Expendables 2, American History X, Conan The Barbarian).
The executive producers of The Tomb are Nicolas Stern, Bill Chase, Stefan Partirosyan.
Schwarzenegger and Stallone will next be seen on screen together in The Expendables 2, which is currently in post-production and will be released this summer by Lionsgate. Schwarzenegger recently wrapped filming The Last Stand, also for Lionsgate, produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and directed by Jee-woon Kim.
About Summit Entertainment
Summit Entertainment, a LIONSGATE® company, is a worldwide theatrical motion picture development, financing, production and distribution studio. The company handles all aspects of marketing and distribution for both its own internally developed motion pictures as well as acquired pictures. Summit also represents international sales for both its own slate and third party product.
About Emmett/Furla Films
Emmett / Furla Films, the Los Angeles based film production and financing company founded in 1998 by company principals Randall Emmett and George Furla, has quickly emerged as one of the industry’s most prolific production companies with the capacity to develop, package, finance and produce a broad array of films for wide theatrical release.
The company just wrapped production on Broken City starring Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Other recently completed EFF films include Frozen Ground starring John Cusack, Nicolas Cage and Vanessa Hudgens; the Stephen Frears directed comedy Lay the Favorite starring Bruce Willis, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rebecca Hall and Vince Vaughn; the drama Fire With Fire starring Josh Duhamel, Bruce Willis and Rosario Dawson; the action-thriller Freelancers starring Robert DeNiro, Forest Whitaker and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson; and the mystery crime thriller End of Watch starring Jake Gyllanhall and Anna Kendrick.
New projects set to go in 2012 include 2 Guns with Mark Wahlberg for Universal, Rule #1 with Reese Witherspoon, Empire State starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Emile Hirsch, andThe Pursuit with Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.
About Atmosphere Entertainment
Founded in late 2003 by noted entertainment industry executive and producer Mark Canton, Atmosphere Entertainment MM, LLC, develops and produces theatrical motion pictures and television programming that will appeal to audiences throughout the world. Atmosphere’s latest film is Immortals, Relativity Media’s epic mythology-themed action adventure starring Henry Cavill, and directed by visionary filmmaker Tarsem. The film, which opened last November has grossed in excess of $230 million worldwide and is the third highest grossing R-rated film of 2011. Among Atmosphere’s recent successes are the mega-hit 300, The Spiderwick Chronicles, based on a series of highly popular children’s graphic novels and Summit’s romantic comedy Letters to Juliet, directed by the late Gary Winick and starring Amanda Seyfried, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Egan, Gael García Bernal, and Franco Nero.
In pre-production is The Battle of Artemesia, the companion to 300 which is written by Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad and will be directed by Noam Murro for Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. based on Frank Miller’s latest graphic novel; Young Caesar, based on the first of Conn Iggulden’s internationally acclaimed, best-selling novels, The Gates of Rome, which tells the story of a young Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus, is adapted by Academy-Award® winner Bill Broyles and Stephen Harrigan and will be directed by Burr Steers; and Tunnels, to be directed by Vincenzo Natali for Relativity, which is expected to be the next sensation in the vein of Harry Potter.
In development are Spanking Shakespeare, which reunites Atmosphere with Spiderwick Chronicles producing partner Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Paramount Pictures, is an hilarious high school comedy about a kid with a funny name who has two things on his mind: getting into college and getting laid; and Play Dead, a fresh and riveting supernatural thriller about football player zombies bent on revenge in a football-obsessed Texas town, is being written by novelist and screenwriter Joe Schreiber based on Ryan Brown’s debut novel with Lucky VIII Films and Davids Canton Productions also producing.
About Kevin King-Templeton
For over two decades, producer Kevin King-Templeton has been associated with Rogue Marble Productions, the production company of writer, director and actor Sylvester Stallone. During his tenure he has found his forte in the action genre, producing projects with a global reach, from the remote jungles of Brazil and Thailand to the most cosmopolitan of cities. In addition to Stallone, King-Templeton has worked with acclaimed acting heavyweights Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Harvey Keitel, Mickey Rourke, Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn.
The British-born King-Templeton has overseen some of the most astounding action sequences in motion picture history, including those shot on location in Bulgaria for the recently wrapped feature The Expendables 2 directed by Simon West and starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth Jean Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Jet Li and Chuck Norris.
His additional credits a producer include The Expendables, directed by Sylvester Stallone;Bullet to the Headdirected by Walter Hill and the latest installment of Rambo shot in the remote inner jungles of Burma, which continued the saga of the heroic Vietnam Vet John Rambo.
King-Templeton also produced Rocky Balboa a critical and audience success that definitively confirmed both Sylvester Stallone and Rocky as iconic cultural symbols. Previously he producedAvenging Angelo and Driven and he also served as associate producer on Get Carter and the critically acclaimed Cop Land for director James Mangold. For television he developed and produced a pilot for Paramount Pictures Television and The CBS Network entitled Father Lefty.
He is also exec producing the highly-anticipated musical production “Rocky,” based on the original 1976 Academy Award © winning motion picture, for Stage Entertainment in Hamburg, Germany, and will eventually bring the show over to America for the Broadway Stage.
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