For years, people have debated whether Die Hard should be considered a Christmas movie -- you know, like Lethal Weapon. While I'm not here to relitigate that timeless argument, Hollywood surely knows that audiences love action movies set during the holidays, and to that end, Warner Bros. has just shelled out more than $1 million for the rights to Tyler Marceca's spec script Stay Frosty, which comes with some high-profile attachments.
Sam Hargrave (Extraction) is set to direct the movie, which will star Idris Elba as a man who miraculously survives an assassin's bullet to the head and has to figure out who wants him dead and why as he makes his way back home in time to spend Christmas with his son.
Elba and Hargrave will produce alongside Dark Horse Entertainment’s Mike Richardson and Keith Goldberg, and Warner Bros. exec Peter Dodd was responsible for bringing in the high-octane project, one that is poised to bring Marceca millions more should it ultimately head into production. If the writer sounds familiar, it's because he wrote the Black List script The Disciple Program, which sold to Universal with Mark Wahlberg attached to star.
Deadline broke the news, describing Elba's character as being cut from the same deadly cloth as Keanu Reeves' John Wick, which may explain why there's an assassin after him. Deadline also describes Stay Frosty as a possible franchise play, so perhaps there's more to this project than initially meets the eye.
Elba will soon be seen as Bloodsport in James Gunn's action movie The Suicide Squad, and he has also wrapped George Miller's next movie Three Thousand Years of Longing, which pairs the actor with Tilda Swinton. Elba is also part of the all-Black ensemble of The Harder They Fall, a Netflix Western starring Jonathan Majors, LaKeith Stanfield, Regina King, Zazie Beetz and Delroy Lindo. Jay-Z executive produced the film, which is expected to debut on the streamer before the end of the year.
Hargrave worked his way up from serving as Chris Evans’ stunt double in Captain America: The Winter Soldier to become fight and stunt coordinator on Captain America: Civil War. By the time Avengers: Infinity War hit theaters, Hargrave had blossomed into a second unit director. He wound up making his feature directing debut with the Chris Hemsworth action movie Extraction, which became the most-watched movie in Netflix's history last summer. That prompted the streamer to order a sequel that will bring back both Hargrave and Hemsworth, as well as producers Joe and Anthony Russo.
Hargrave is also attached to direct Jake Gyllenhaal in the MGM movie Combat Control, which sounds like an exciting pairing on paper. He strikes me as a strong fit for Stay Frosty, and with Elba front and center here, I expect this movie to heat up the holidays one December in the not-too-distant future. I'm just curious what Collider's editor-in-chief thinks of the title...