Hayley Atwell and Gerard Butler Starring in ‘Empire City’

Hayley Atwell and Gerard Butler to Star in New Thriller ‘Empire City’

‘Love & Monsters’ Michael Matthews will direct the new hostage drama thriller set in New York, which has a script from Brian Tucker and S. Craig Zahler.

(Left) Hayley Atwell stars in 'Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning - Part One'. (Right) Gerard Butler stars in 'Plane.'

Preview:

Hayley Atwell and Gerard Butler are aboard ‘Empire City.’
It’s a new hostage thriller set in New York.
Michael Matthews will direct the movie.

It’s always nice when projects you think might have vanished into the development ether pop back up again with people attached.

In this case, hostage thriller ‘Empire City,’ whose rights were up for sale at Cannes last year, now has two leads –– that would be Hayley Atwell and Gerard Butler –– on board, and a director in ‘Love & Monsters’ Michael Matthews.

Empire City

Not Yet RatedAction Thriller

Starring: Gerard Butler, Hayley Atwell

According to Deadline, the script has been through some tweaks (more on the story below) and is now aiming to kick off shooting this month.

What’s the story of ‘Empire City’?

(L to R) Maurice Compte and Gerard Butler in 'Den of Thieves'. Photo: STXfilms.

The story kicks off when a hostage crisis erupts inside New York’s landmark Cleburne 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.

Definite shades of ‘Die Hard’, then, but the script comes from S. Craig Zahler (‘Bone Tomahawk’) and Brian Tucker (‘Broken City’) so they’ve hopefully added some fresh twists.

Where else can we see Hayley Atwell and Gerard Butler?

Hayley Atwell plays Grace in 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' from Paramount Pictures and Skydance. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

Atwell was most recently seen reprising the role of pickpocket Grace in ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ and has a voice in the English dub of new animated movie ‘Grand Prix of Europe.’

Alongside ‘Empire City,’ she’s part of the cast for director Duncan Jones’ adaptation of ‘Rogue Trooper’ and will also show up in the second season of TV drama ‘Rivals.’

As for Butler, he was back this year in two memorable roles: he played the live-action version of his Stoick character in the new adaptation of ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and returned as Nicholas “Big Nick” O’Brien for ‘Den of Thieves 2: Pantera.’

Coming up, he has disaster sequel ‘Greenland 2: Migration’ and a third ‘Den of Thieves’ movie is in the works.

When will ‘Empire City’ be in theaters?

Even with international distribution rights already sold to finance production, this one is still at the sales stage for the U.S., so we’ll have to wait and where it lands.

And who doesn’t want to see Agent Carter and Big Nick team up to take down baddies?