Gerard Butler is set to star in the hostage crisis film Empire City and Deadline is now reporting that his co-star on the film will be the MCU’s very own Agent Carter, Hayley Atwell. The action film is set to be helmed by Michael Matthews (Love & Monsters) from a script by Brian Tucker and S. Craig Zahler. Since the film’s first reporting by the publication, the story had since been tweaked.
The synopsis, according to Deadline, reads, “In Empire City, when a hostage crisis erupts inside New York’s landmark Clybourn 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.” So, basically it’s Die Hard with slightly more people trying to save the hostages? That could be fun. Butler is a reliable action personality and Atwell has cut her teeth in the MCU before graduating to the Tom Cruise School of Stunts in the last Mission: Impossible installments, so she’s definitely able to hold her own with Butler.
Butler returns to the end of the world early next year with his sequel to Greenland, titled Greenland 2: Migration. That synopsis reads, In the aftermath of a comet strike that decimated most of the earth, Greenland 2: Migration follows the Garrity family as they’re forced to leave the safety of their bunker in Greenland to traverse a shattered world in search of a new home. Butler and Morena Baccarin reprise the roles of John and Allison Garrity, with Roman Griffin Davis taking over the role of Nathan Garrity from Roger Dale Floyd. Also in the cast are Amber Rose Revah (The Punisher), Sophie Thompson (Gosford Park), Trond Fausa Aurvåg (The Bothersome Man), and William Abadie (Emily in Paris).
Atwell is coming off the two-part extravagant installments of the last two Mission: Impossible films, and she found that working with Cruise was almost like working with a movie deity, “When I started, I was very aware of the rarefied air around him and how there is no one like him. And there never will be because actors aren’t made like him any more. He is a one-man studio and, to me, very kind, very professional.” It was this mode that helped push Atwell to give it everything she had, something Cruise is no stranger to inspiring in his co-stars. “And because of that, I felt I was able to try lots of different things. There was never a risk of failure or being unsafe. Tom really likes people to thrive on set.”