Liam Neeson is adding yet another crime thriller to his slate of upcoming projects.  The actor is attached to star in a remake of the 2011 French crime thriller A Gang Story, per Deadline.  Safe House director Daniel Espinosa is attached to direct the Thunder Road production with a script by David Scarpa (Daredevil reboot).  The original film centers on a former organized crime member who, as he nears the age of 60, is trying to put his crime life behind him and tend to his wife, children, and grandchildren.  The tables are turned when his former cohort—who has done nothing to give up the crime life—comes back into the picture.

There’s no word on when production might begin, and Neeson and Espinosa both have very crowded dance cards at the moment.  Neeson next shoots Seth MacFarlane’s comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West and is also attached to star in Run All Night and is being eyed for the depression-era drama Highwaymen, while Espinosa is gearing up to helm the thriller Child 44 and is attached to the Yakuza film The Outsider and the John Grisham adaptation The Racketeer.

Director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) is reportedly developing the John Grisham adaptation The Racketeer as a directing vehicle at Fox 2000 and New Regency.  The judicial murder mystery novel, which released in October of 2012, centers on an attorney in federal prison who uses his singular knowledge about the murder of a federal judge in order to help solve the case and regain his freedom.  The producers are currently searching for a writer to adapt the project.  Hit the jump for more on The Racketeer.

Back in December, we learned that Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace were looking to team up for the Dennis Lehane adaptation Animal Rescue.  Well now it appears that the duo may be planning back-to-back projects, as Heat Vision reports that Hardy and Rapace are in talks to star in Child 44.  The film is based on the book of the same name by Tom Rob Smith and takes place in the 1950s where it centers on a security officer in the Soviet Union who finds himself demoted and exiled while investigating a string of murders.

Safe House helmer Daniel Espinosa is set to direct the thriller, with Hardy looking to play the Soviet officer and Rapace eyeing the role of his mysterious wife.  Ridley Scott and Michael Costigan are onboard to produce, and filming is hoping to get underway in May in Budapest, after Hardy and Rapace complete Animal Rescue which shoots in March.  Hit the jump to read a synopsis for Smith’s novel.

Director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) is reported circling the director’s chair for Child 44, an adaptation of the Tom Rob Smith novel.  The first book in a trilogy (followed by The Secret Speech and Agent 6) was adapted by the Oscar-nominated Richard Price (The Color of Money).  Child 44 centers on Leo Demidov, a security officer in Stalin’s Soviet Union who finds himself demoted and exiled while investigating a string of murders.  It’s a taut, gripping tale with an unexpected climax that should be perfectly suited for the big screen.  Hit the jump for more on Child 44.

Easy Money (aka Snabba Cash), from director Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), is a Swedish crime thriller based on the international best-selling novel by Jens Lapidus, now being presented in the U.S. by Martin Scorsese.  The story follows JW (Joel Kinnaman), a lower-class business student living a double life with Stockholm’s wealthy elite.  To keep up his lifestyle, he finds himself in deep with the dark world of organized crime and in an intensely dramatic struggle for life and death.

For the film’s press day, Collider spoke to actor Joel Kinnaman (The Killing), in both a roundtable and a 1-on-1 interview, about what it’s like to finally have U.S. audiences get to see the 2010 film, his desire to tell stories in the moral grey zone, how he finally ended up landing the role of JW, and what he finds most appealing about acting.  He also talked about taking on a film with as much attention as the RoboCop re-imagining, how proud he is to have the opportunity to work with Gary Oldman, how surreal it is that the film already has a viral campaign, that he wants to do as much of his stunts as he can, how he felt about the Season 2 finale of his AMC drama series The Killing, and his hopes for a Season 3.  Check out what he had to say after the jump.

A new trailer for The Weinstein Company’s U.S. release of the Swedish thriller Easy Money (Snabba Cash) has landed online.  The pic is based on a novel by Swedish author Jens Lapidus and follows a taxi driver (Joel Kinnaman) in Stockholm who gets caught up in a drug-running operation.  Directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), the film made a splash in Sweden when it was released in 2010.  Kinnaman has since found success in the U.S. on the AMC series The Killing, and he’s set as the lead in the upcoming RoboCop reboot.  Martin Scorsese has attached his named to the U.S. release of the film, and this trailer does a good job of selling the action to audiences who may be averse to reading subtitles.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The film also stars Matias Padin Varela, Dragomir Mrsic, Lisa Henni, Dejan Čukić, Annika Whittembury, Lea Stojanov, and Fares Fares.  Easy Money opens on July 11th.

Safe House is the kind of movie that you might run across on cable a couple years down the line and forgot that you had ever seen it.  Sure, it’s got a good cast (Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Vera Farmiga, Brendan Gleeson, and Sam Shepard), but it’s so routine and by the numbers that by the end the film it almost completely evaporates from memory.  Our review of the Blu-ray of Safe House follows after the jump.

Coming off the success of the action thriller Safe House, Swedish director Daniel Espinosa looks to have landed a major gig at Warner Bros. Variety reports that Espinosa is in early talks to direct the WWII Yakuza film The Outsider. The story centers on a POW who is broken out by the Yakuza and then forced to work for the Japanese crime syndicate. As with nearly every other film in development these days, Michael Fassbender is being eyed to star. No official offers have been made, but apparently Warner Bros. is keen on the Shame actor for the lead. The studio acquired the screenplay from scribe Andrew Baldwin last August and made the project a priority.

Espinosa was best known for the Swedish crime thriller Snabba Cash before his studio debut, and in just three weeks of release Safe House has already raked in over $130 million worldwide. Depending on the studio’s timetable for The Outsider, it’s unclear how feasible it would be for Fassbender to star. In addition to press duties for Prometheus this summer, he’s already onboard for Ridley Scott’s The Counselor and Steve McQueen‘s period pic Twelve Years a Slave. The premise sounds great and Espinosa definitely shows promise, so The Outsider is definitely one to watch in the coming months, especially if Fassbender commits.

Although it’s been two years since The Weinstein Co. picked up the Swedish thriller, Snabba Cash, the movie finally has a release date of July 27^th. Directed by Daniel Espinosa (Safe House), the film (being released as Easy Money) is based on a novel by Swedish author Jens Lapidus and follows a taxi driver (Joel Kinnaman) in Stockholm who gets caught up in a drug-running operation. The novel itself was at the heart of the film’s release delay because the English translation is only just arriving on American shores this April. Pointing to the success of the Stieg Larsson (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) books and banking on the box-office magic of Espinosa’s Safe House, Harvey Weinstein hopes the wait will be worth it. Hit the jump to see what he had to say.

In the action thriller Safe House, directed by Swedish filmmaker Daniel Espinosa (Snabba Cash), Oscar winner Denzel Washington plays legendary spy Tobin Frost, the CIA’s most dangerous traitor who suddenly surfaces in South Africa after eluding capture for almost a decade. When the safe house to which he’s remanded is attacked by brutal mercenaries, rookie Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is forced to help him escape and the two men must stay alive long enough to uncover who wants them dead.

During this recent exclusive phone interview with Collider, Daniel Espinosa talked about the appeal of applying his approach to character work to such a fast-paced story, his desire to work with talent that he could never work with in Europe, the importance of getting audiences to invest in both of the lead characters, feeling empathetic pain when Denzel Washington had to get water-boarded, and how nerve-wracking it is to make any movie, no matter the scale. He also talked about wanting to chill out for a bit before reading the stack of scripts he’s promised his agent and manager that he’d take a look at, never doing anything just for money, and what led him down the career path to director. Check out what he had to say after the jump.

There’s no problem with delivering a solid action thriller that doesn’t reinvent the genre, but Safe House goes through the motions without an ounce of creativity or flavor.  It’s the bare minimum of what an action movie should be and marches through gunfights and car chases because that’s what the genre requires, not what makes the film exciting.  Denzel Washington doesn’t add much by doing a tamer retread of his Training Day performance, and Ryan Reynolds is the film’s redeeming aspect as he tries to bring a little nuance and shading to his character.  But the main fault lays with director Daniel Espinosa, who knows how to make Safe House loud, but not much else.

With director Daniel Espinosa‘s action-thriller Safe House opening February 10, Universal has provided us with four clips and 18 images from the film.  The story centers on a young CIA agent (Ryan Reyonlds) who’s tasked with transporting a dangerous criminal (Denzel Washington) to a new location after their safe house is attacked by assassins.  Safe House also stars Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard, Vera Farmiga, Fares Fares, Robert Patrick, Nora Arnezeder, Liam Cunningham, Joel Kinnaman, and Ruben Blades.  Hit the jump to check out the clips and images and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Universal has released the first trailer for the thriller Safe House starring Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds.  The story centers on a young CIA agent (Reynolds) who must team up with the dangerous criminal in order to survive when their safe house is destroyed by mercenaries.  The trailer goes heavy on the action, but it looks like director Daniel Espinosa (Snabba Cash) has done a great job.  But the biggest hook is the dynamic between Washington and Reynolds.  Few actors have as much fun playing the bad guy as Washington and he clearly relishes flipping between charm and malevolence on a dime.  My only complaint with the trailer is that it shows a little too much, but overall I like what I’m seeing.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer and the larger version of the poster and image released yesterday, plus two new images.  The film also stars Brendan Gleeson, Sam Shepard, Vera Farmiga, Fares Fares, Robert Patrick, Nora Arnezeder, Liam Cunningham, Joel Kinnaman, and Ruben Blades.  Safe House opens February 10, 2012.

The new AMC series The Killing is host to fine some acting — too fine to be confined to television.  Tonight, it was reported Mireille Enos is in talks to join Brad Pitt in World War Z; now Heat Vision adds that her Killing co-star Joel Kinnaman will star opposite Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds, Tim McGraw, Brendan Gleeson, Ruben Blades and the recently announced Vera Farmiga in Safe House.  The story follows “the only surviving agent of an attack on a CIA safe house (Reynolds) as he tries to transport a lethal prisoner (Washington) to a second destination before being taken out by violent forces that want them both dead.”  Kinnaman will play a man who operates the safe house in what Heat Vision calls “a key role.”

The Swedish actor first gained international attention last year in Snabba Cash.  Safe House just so happens to be the Hollywood debut of director Daniel Espinosa.  Kinnaman will first be seen in The Darkest Hour, an alien invasion thriller due December 23.  Safe House follows on February 10, 2012.  Filming is currently underway in South Africa.

Filming on Daniel Espinosa’s thriller Safe House is well underway (we showed you some set photos from the film back in early March), but the production has just landed another great actor.  Deadline reports that Vera Farmiga has joined the film, which follows a young agent (Ryan Reynolds) assigned to escort a deadly operative (Denzel Washington) to safety after their safe house is attacked.  According to Deadline, “Farmiga will play a CIA operative supervising Reynolds’ character.”  The film also stars Nora Arnezeder, Ruben Blades, Brendan Gleeson, Liam Cunningham, Tim McGraw, Robert Patrick, and Sam Shepard.

Farmiga recently co-starred in Source Code.   She recently signed on to co-star with Michael C. Hall in Love, Scotch and Death. Her directorial debut, Higher Ground, played at Sundance and will hit theaters this summer. Safe House is due out February 10, 2012.