Ethan Hawke has been attached for a while: slotting it into his busy schedule after A Late Quartet and a stint off-Broadway. Now comes the news that he'll be joined on CIA thriller The Numbers Station by Malin Akerman.
Hawke is also producing the film through his Under the Influence company. He'll be playing a disgraced black-ops agent, exiled to a dead-end posting in the Nevada desert. Akerman is the woman he must fight to protect when a surprise attack happens. By whom? Nobody's saying yet...
Akerman needs protecting? C'mon, this is Silk Spectre mk. 2 we're talking about, Watchmen fans. Hawke's character would do well to hide behind her and stay out of the way. Not that he's a stranger to a bit of a gun-happy drama himself: there've been the Antoine Fuqua films (Training Day and Brooklyn's Finest), not to mention the Assault on Precinct 13 remake. Assault is a re-jigging of Rio Bravo, which, with it's siege in a Western-setting, Numbers Station is superficially resembling at the moment.
The budget is currently set at a paltry $10m, so don't expect an action spectacle. $10m is about the cost of the average DTV Steven Seagal flick. Not quite sure what our point is there. Numbers Station will be directed by the Danish filmmaker Kasper Barfoed (he made The Candidate and is attached to Hammer's Wake) and should start shooting in early 2011.