Cast your brain box back in time to April 2011, where we brought word that Eastern Promises writer Steve Knight had worked up a script called Hummingbird that he intended to make his directorial debut. Things have moved on apace as he’s now got the cash to make the movie and Jason Statham locked in to star.
The Stath will play a former Special Forces soldier who has found himself sucked into London’s grimy criminal underworld (fertile territory for Knight, it would seem). But when he gets the chance to take on another identity, he embraces it, and becomes an avenging angel looking to take down wrongdoers.
IM Global is aboard to stump up the $20 million to make the movie, which Knight will shoot early next year in the city. It won’t actually be his first directing credit, though: he also shot a few episodes of Jasper Carrott/Robert Powell cop comedy The Detectives that he co-created with Mike Whitehill.
Knight, who most recently worked on the script for Clash Of The Titans 2 for Warners, has a variety of other writing jobs under his belt, including a pass on Dan Brown pic The Lost Symbol and Victorian space adventure Larklight.
Statham, meanwhile, is at work on The Expendables 2 and will next be seen in Safe and Parker.