{"id":523209,"date":"2026-06-28T21:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T21:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/523209\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T21:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T21:51:13","slug":"renny-harlin-teases-the-beast-movie-starring-samuel-l-jackson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/523209\/","title":{"rendered":"Renny Harlin Teases \u2018The Beast\u2019 Movie Starring Samuel L. Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tRenny Harlin<\/a> has returned to Malta. The veteran filmmaker touched down on the island last week to attend the Mediterrane Film Festival, which screened his latest film, the shark thriller Deep Water, starring Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley. But it was his 1995 action flick Cutthroat Island that originally brought the Finnish auteur to Malta, host of many blockbuster Hollywood productions, including the Gladiator and Jurassic Park franchises.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd he was stoked to be back. \u201cMalta is the best-kept secret,\u201d Harlin told Collider\u2019s Steven Weintraub during a masterclass conversation on directing held inside the festival hub in Valletta last week. \u201cPeople don\u2019t realize how incredible this place is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe duo covered Harlin\u2019s career from start to finish, ending their chat with a look ahead at Harlin\u2019s next release, The Beast, starring Samuel L. Jackson<\/a> and Joel Kinnaman<\/a>, due for release in October. Penned by Umair Aleem, the film casts Jackson as a U.S. president who becomes trapped inside his heavily armored presidential limousine, aka \u201dthe Beast,\u201d during a coordinated coup by a hostile militia. To survive, the president must uncover the vehicle\u2019s top-secret offensive capabilities and fight his way back to safety and his country.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHarlin and Steven Weintraub of Collider share the stage at Mediterrane Film Festival on June 26.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mediterrane Film Festival<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a really unusual movie and quite a brilliant script,\u201d Harlin told Weintraub and a capacity crowd, adding that the film opens with the \u201cbiggest action scene you\u2019ve ever seen\u201d straight when the lights hit the screen. \u201c[The audience realizes] that we are in a world summit like a G7 meeting with all the world leaders, and there\u2019s been a humongous terrorist attack. It\u2019s never really explained who the terrorists are or what nationality they are or anything like that, but there\u2019s been an attempt on the lives of several presidents. They have to get Sam Jackson into the Beast, which is his safe, bulletproof, explosion-proof vehicle and get him the hell out of there before he\u2019s killed. And one thing leads to another.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe film marks a fourth collaboration between Harlin and Jackson, who previously worked together on 1996\u2019s The Long Kiss Goodnight, 1999\u2019s Deep Blue Sea and 2007\u2019s Cleaner. In The Beast, Jackson\u2019s character is joined by a \u201cbadly wounded\u201d Secret Service agent, played by Kinnaman. \u201cIt\u2019s the story of these two guys in a car trying to survive, and I dare to say that it\u2019s a very exciting movie, a very action-packed movie and a very unusual movie that has a very beautiful, happy ending,\u201d said the filmmaker.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also hopes it delivers a beautiful boost to Kinnaman\u2019s career. \u201cI\u2019d like to think that this movie is really going to make Joel\u2019s career,\u201d said Harlin of the veteran actor whose long list of credits includes For All Mankind, Silent Night, House of Cards, Altered Carbon, The Suicide Squad, Hanna and the recent Imperfect Women. \u201cPeople are going to be stunned when they see his performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey may have a similar reaction to seeing the inimitable Beast vehicle, which Harlin clearly had fun experimenting with. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s indestructible,\u201d he explained. \u201cNo matter what missiles they send its way, they can\u2019t destroy the car. They just keep going, and then it has some weapons that we\u2019ll never know [about]. I don\u2019t think anybody can prove whether it has these weapons or not, but this one does. \u2026 The president has never done anything but smoked a cigar in the back of the car so he doesn\u2019t know how any of these things work. There\u2019s all these computer panels and weapons and things that he\u2019s trying to figure out how to work them and he can\u2019t get in touch with the headquarters and he\u2019s all alone there, so it just becomes this incredible survival story. This is my fourth movie with Sam, and the relationship between him and Joel Kinnaman is exceptional.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHarlin and Weintraub share the stage.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Mediterrane Film Festival<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHarlin and producer wife Johanna Kokkila at Malta\u2019s Mediterrane Film Festival on June 26.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Renny Harlin has returned to Malta. The veteran filmmaker touched down on the island last week to attend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,61,60,14810,44466,124978],"class_list":["post-523209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-joel-kinnaman","tag-renny-harlin","tag-samuel-l-jackson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}