If Dan Stevens was last seen sporting heavy prosthetic for Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast – a lucrative reimagining of the fairytale classic that has since gone on to become a box office juggernaut – the actor’s next project couldn’t be more different.
It’s called Apostle, and it comes from the mind of Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans. If that name rings a bell, it should; Evans is the creative genius behind hardboiled action thriller The Raid and its divisive sequel, and after flirting with the possibility of a third film in the franchise – incidentally, the filmmaker recently gave his seal of approval to an English-language reimagining involving Frank Grillo and Joe Carnahan – Gareth Evans is now knee-deep in his bloody revenge thriller.
As the official synopsis reveals, Dan Stevens is on board to play the part of Thomas Richardson, a lone protagonist who wanders onto a remote island in search of his missing sister. Upon stepping foot on the primordial outcrop, he comes across a volatile religious cult who “will regret the day it baited this man.” Cut the fireworks.
The year is 1905. Thomas Richardson travels to a remote island to rescue his sister after she’s kidnapped by a mysterious religious cult demanding a ransom for her safe return. It soon becomes clear that the cult will regret the day it baited this man, as he digs deeper and deeper into the secrets and lies upon which the commune is built.
Also starring Michael Sheen, Lucy Boynton, Mark Lewis Jones, Bill Milner, Kristine Froseth, and Paul Higgins, XYZ Films has partnered with Netflix to finance and distribute Apostle, and with the cameras now rolling, it shouldn’t be too much longer before we catch a glimpse of the inaugural trailer.
Apostle continues to truck along in development, and you can find the rather unsettling first image below. Netflix has acquired distribution rights for Gareth Evans’ period revenge thriller, so expect it to bow online sometime in 2018.
