Back in 2010, Paramount opened its corporate wallet and bought George Mahaffrey’s spec action script Heatseekers. The project has been rocketing its way through development ever since and has now landed in the lap of director Timur Bekmambetov, who will hoist the megaphone.
F Scott Frazier has also been hired to polish up the script, which sees a young former military pilot tasked with infiltrating a gang of aerial pirates in Bangkok. The screenplay, as it stood when it was bought, had the gang attempting a complicated tower heist using parachutes and powered gliders.
Given the subject matter, you won’t be all that surprised to learn that Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes company is producing the pic, along with Fast & Furiou****s franchise writer/producer Chris Morgan. Let’s face, it – this one essentially seems to be** The Fast & The Furious: Airborne.**
Bekmambetov certainly has the chops to deliver on the action, but we’ll have to hope for something a little more coherent than last year’s dud Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which made some money around the world, but wasn’t as fun as it could have been given the title. Let's hope this gets back to the slightly leaner but still visually spectacular heights of Night Watch.