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Apostle: The Raid Director Shares First Image & Synopsis of New Film
Apostle director Gareth Evans (pictured above) has shared a new image and the official synopsis from his upcoming film. The world first became familiar with the considerable talents of the filmmaker with his 2011 action flick, The Raid: Redemption. Set mostly inside a single tenement building, The Raid pitted SWAT team members against criminals in an escalating series of intricately-choreographed Indonesian martial arts battles. A cult hit beloved by martial arts aficionados, The Raid spawned a 2014 sequel also directed by Evans and is set to be followed up by his The Raid 3. Meanwhile, A U.S. remake of The Raid is still being planned with Joe Carnahan in the director’s chair.
The busy Gareth Evans isn’t only intent on revisiting The Raid until the end of time, and has other projects in the works as well. For his upcoming film Apostle, Evans is shifting gears wildly by leaving behind the universe of martial arts madness for a trip to the world of early 20th Century religious cults.
On his Instagram page, Evans shared a first image from Apostle, and there is a definite There Will Be Blood vibe going on (hard to imagine anything being further from The Raid, but that may be the entire point). The image shows an unknown actor clad in a drab gray suit, a Bible clutched in his right hand, mesmerizing a room full of period-clothed followers with his preachings. You can check it out below:
Apostle is being released by XYZ Films, the same company responsible for The Raid, and on their website there is a synopsis for the film:
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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.
It’s safe to assume Apostle will not be packed with Evans’ signature Raid-style martial arts action, unless the director is preparing to take what sounds like a dramatic period mystery in a very weird direction. Evans of course has not only done action films, but did explore horror – and in fact religious cults – in his segment for the film V/H/S/2. The director is also preparing an action film called Blister but details on that project are completely unknown at this time.
The film stars the inescapable Dan Stevens (who can next be seen this summer in the first-person action film Kill Switch) alongside Michael Sheen (Passengers), Lucy Boynton (Sing Street), Mark Lewis Jones (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) , Bill Milner (iBoy), Kristine Froseth (Let the Right One In) and Paul Higgins (In the Loop). The film went before cameras this spring and has been picked up by Netflix for release in 2018.
[Screen Rant]
