‘Empire City’: Hayley Atwell & Gerard Butler To Lead NYC Hostage Crisis Action-Thriller Penned By S. Craig Zahler

It’s been a hot moment since we’ve had a major film project from S. Craig Zahler, but he’s now co-writing a new hostage action-thriller set in New York City titled “Empire City,” that will see Michael Matthews directing from a script written by both Brian Tucker and Zahler.

They’ve also secured two decent sized stars in the lead roles with Hayley Atwell (“Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning,” “Captain America: The First Avenger”) and Gerard Butler (“Den of Thieves 2”) toplining “Empire City” as mentioned in the Deadline report. This is expected to be much more serious than Matthews’ previous outing with the comedic post-apocalypse creature feature “Love & Monsters.”

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A brief logline for the pic as prodvided by the outlet after the script has seen some tweaks:

“When a hostage crisis erupts inside New York’s landmark Clybourn Building, firefighter Rhett (Butler), his squad, and his NYPD wife Dani (Atwell) must fight and navigate their way through the building to rescue the captives.”

“Empire City” reunites Butler and his G-BASE partner Alan Siegel with fellow “Plane” producer Marc Butan from MadRiver Pictures and Paul Currie. Leonine Studios co-financed development with Quirin Berg and Alexander Janssen set to executive produce. The Veterans represent international and CAA Media Finance is handling domestic rights as sales will continue at the American Film Market as it debuts this week.

The action flick was financed under MadRiver’s multi-year equity financing and distribution deal with a breakdown of current international distributors which includes DeAPlaneta (Spain), Eagle Pictures (Italy), IDC Distribution (Latin America), previoulsy mentioned Leonine Studios (Germany and Austria), The Searchers (Benelux), Shochiku (Japan), SND (France) and Unicorn Media (Eastern Europe), who will handle distribution in those respective theatrical territories. 

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Zahler, of course, is a filmmaker in his own right with bombastic genre credits that include the brutal Western horror flick “Bone Tomahawk,” the Vince Vaughn starring gritty prison thriller “Brawl In Cell Block 99,” and the dirty cop/robbery thriller “Dragged Across Concrete.”