Colin Firth is not a chap you usually associate with death and mayhem, though that seems to be changing, at least cinematically, with the darker tones of The Railway Man and playing a spy in Matthew Vaughn’s The Secret Service. He’s now on to star in Three To Kill, which will boast the directorial efforts of Christopher McQuarrie.
From the sounds of the plot, which will be adapted from Jean-Patrick Manchette’s novel, Firth’s character won’t actually be the one doing the murderising in this case. He’s set to play a disillusioned businessman visiting the French coast who unwittingly witnesses a murder.
When the two sociopaths who pulled off the killing decide to bump off anyone that could tie them to the crime, they start relentlessly hunting our hero. Manchette’s book has already hopped between formats once: Jacques Tardi turned it into a graphic novel called West Coast Blues in 2010 and the work scored two Eisner nominations.
Though Andrew Lauren Productions is on board to finance the film, it’ll have to wait at least until McQuarrie is finished making Mission: Impossible 5, which he’s preparing now after locking in Tom Cruise (natch) and Simon Pegg already. As for Firth, he’s at work on The Secret Service and will be busy providing Paddington Bear’s voice for the new take on the children's character.