Best-known for her action roles in “Skyscraper,” with Dwayne Johnson, and Simon West’s “Skyfire,” Asian star Hannah Quinlivan has joined director Jesse Atlas’s sci-fi feature “Soul Assassin.”
The film’s ensemble cast also includes Bruce Willis (“Die Hard,” “The Sixth Sense”), Andy Allo (“Upload,” “Pitch Perfect 3”), Nomzamo Mbatha (“Coming2America,” “All About Love”), Dominic Purcell (“Killer Elite,” “Assault on Wall Street”) and Mustafa Shakir (“Cowboy Bebop,” “Emancipation”).
Atlas’ feature debut, “Soul Assassin” is described as a female-led, mind-bending sci-fi thriller. In it, a female former black ops soldier joins an experimental drone warfare program to hunt down her husband’s killer. When the technology is stolen, however, the hunter becomes the hunted.
“This is a groundbreaking genre film bound to be an audience favorite and an international dream cast of both veterans and rising stars adds even more appeal,” said Atlas, who wrote “Soul Assassin” along with Aaron Wolfe, based on their short film “Let Them Die Like Lovers.”
Quinlivan’s casting news comes as “Soul Assassin,” which is financed by Joel Shapiro of MagiCity Studios and Jeff Elliott of Brickell & Broadbridge International, has closed new major territories with big commercial distributors such as Eagle Pictures for Italy and CDC for Latin America. NK Contents has clinched Korea and Front Row West Asia.
In a statement buy, unveiled at last July’s Cannes Festival, Saban Films announced that it had taken rights on “Soul Assassin” to not only North America but Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, France, South Africa and Scandinavia – the first time Saban had acquired a movie for half the major film markets in the world.
Foreign territory sales are led by Brickell & Broadbridge International’s Jason Burke Setter who will be taking meetings at Berlin’s European Film Market this week.
Shapiro told Variety that the film’s producers expected at the conclusion of EFM to have sold out the remaining international territories on “Soul Assassin,” which they are readying for delivery.
Quinlivan is repped by JVR Music in Taiwan and CAA in the U.S.