An action movie starring the woman who took down the Predator in Prey and the man mountain lead of Prime Video's Reacher, written by the dude responsible for John Wick, and directed by the stunt co-ordinator for the likes of Logan and Avatar: The Way Of Water may sound like some kind of nutty genre fever dream, but it's actually very real — and it could be the next big action franchise. Per Deadline's reporting, Yautja ass kicker Amber Midthunder and actual Jack Reacher Alan Ritchson are set to team up on Painter, an all-new action movie poured from the pen of Derek Kolstad and helmed by genre veteran Garrett Warren.
Due to set sales at the American Film Market next week, Painter — per the description provided to Deadline — is set to centre around an expertly trained young woman (Midthunder) who's forced to put her skills to use when her father (presumably Ritchson) is kidnapped. It sounds a little like a reverse Taken conceptually, but for production label Infrared's President of, er, Production Drew Simon, the movie is a chance to make a fully-fledged franchise heroine of Amber Midthunder. "Painter will be a seminal action hero film, making Midthunder into this generation’s Sarah Connor,” said Simon in a statement, invoking Linda Hamilton's iconic Terminator lead. “We loved Kolstad’s high-octane script, and we know with Garrett Warren at the helm this film will kickstart an exciting new franchise in the world of action.”
Whilst we don't know who'll be joining Midthunder and Ritchson for Painter just yet, this new project comes hot on the heels of exciting news elsewhere for both leads in recent weeks. Midthunder has just joined the Season 2 cast of Apple TV+'s MonsterVerse spin-off Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters, whilst Ritchson's set to go another round as Jack Reacher in Reacher Season 4, which was confirmed to be in the works at Amazon just a couple of weeks ago. And if Painter does become a franchise, we've already got the sequel titles covered. There's the dark sophomore feature, Painter 2: A Brush With Death; a jaunt to Ireland for the third instalment, Painter 3: Oil Be Back; and the soft reboot (because there's always a soft reboot), P4INTER: Blank Canvas. We'll expect our cheque in the post any day now.