Scott Waugh’s Need For Speed movie may not have lit up the box office in the way DreamWorks, Aaron Paul or even the director himself would have hoped in 2014 – succumbing to the age-old video-game-to-movie curse that has lingered over Hollywood for a generation – but Waugh has dusted himself off and has now emerged to direct a new thriller for Sierra/Affinity, titled Blackout.
Written by Sidney King with Brooks McLaren providing some final touch ups, Waugh’s latest foray behind the camera will involve high-speed pursuits and tense shootouts. It’s a darker, slightly edgier vehicle than Need for Speed – no pun intended – telling the tale of a do-gooder cop tasked with transporting an ominous criminal across the city. It is, for all intents and purposes, a routine trip that the yet-to-be-cast protagonist could do without thinking, but when a power outage thrusts the entire area into a seemingly perpetual Blackout, his once-bulletproof plan begins to unfold – and fast.
Financed and produced by Sierra and Affinity, the majority of the pieces appear to be in place in terms of the film’s financial partners, with Kelly McCormick producing on behalf of the aforementioned pairing. Beyond that, Blackout will also gain the backing of Broken Road’s Todd Garner and Jeremy Stein, both of which are set to produce.
Now that Waugh has been instated at the helm, the search is now underway for an actor to play the leading role and, perhaps more intriguingly, that of the detained criminal that must be transported across this city. Off the bat, a likely scenario could lobby Colin Farrell and Woody Harrelson for the parts, though the jury’s still out on whether Blackout has the star power to attract that kind of calibre.