Virus films are apparently all the rage (“28 Days Later” puns aside). David Tenant, Thandie Newton and Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy from the ‘Harry Potter’ franchise) have all signed on to star in “Retreat” a psychological thriller that has an outbreak-like bent.
To be directed by Carl Tibbetts (a newcomer with no feature IMDB credits), who also co-wrote the script, the film will come out under the aegis of Magnet Films and is eyeing a May shoot in Canada. The film centers on a couple (Newton and Isaacs) seeking to rebuild and rekindle their relationship by a vacation on a remote island, but their tranquility is disrupted when a half-dead military man (Tennant) comes down on their doorstep warning them of a lethal virus killing millions on the mainland, according to ScreenDaily.
Obviously Steven Soderbergh recently announced his multi-strand action outbreak thriller “Contagion” which we reported as something that the director wanted to get out first because other, similar projects were in the works (he even flipped his sched and put “Liberace” aside for now). “Retreat” was one of these films, and apparently Will Smith is developing a TV mini-series with a virus-based plot and Ridley Scott is back at it again too.
Scott famously tried to get “Hot Zone” off the ground in 1994 with Robert Redford and Jodie Foster, but abandoned the idea when “Outbreak” would beat him to screens when it went into production first. Could this mean “Hot Zone” — based on a 1992 New Yorker article “Crisis in the Hot Zone” by Richard Preston — could be coming back? Scott obviously develops several projects at once and evidently never throws anything out so its possible. His “Gucci” film with Leonardo DiCaprio and Angelina Jolie loosely attached was actually first announced in 2006, granted a major difference from fifteen years ago, but perhaps there is hope for those that wanted to see that project come to fruition.
Though “Retreat” might be a more intimate look at the virus fall-out. Magnet Film heads said the film reminded them of “Dead Calm,” Phillip Noyce’s 1998 thriller that centered on a similar trio of Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, Billy Zane stuck on a boat and nobody else.