10/06/2013 - US actor Samuel L. Jackson to play the lead in Finnish director Jalmari Helander's first English-language action adventure, which will shoot from late summer in Finland and Germany

US actor Samuel L Jackson will play the American president in Big Game, the first English-language production by Finnish director Jalmari Helander, who disclosed the best guarded secret of Christmas in his feature debut, the 2010 horror adventure Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Jalmari Helander
film profile]. The €7.5 million movie, which will shoot from late summer for a 2014-2015 premiere, will receive €670,000 production funding from the Finnish Film Foundation.

Scripted by Helander and his partner-producer Petri Jokirante, Big Game follows a 13-year-old boy, Oskari, who will take his test of manhood by spending a day and night in the wilderness of the vast local forest, armed only with bow and arrow. Bad timing: that night Air Force One is shot down over Finland by terrorists, and Oskari teams up with the US president on the escape from the radicals closing in on them - the most extraordinary 24 hours of their lives.

"The film will take the universal rite-of-passage theme of iconic 1980s' films as E.T. and The Karate Kid and combine it with the visceral thrill of high-concept action classics as Die Hard and Taken," said Jokirante, who will produce for Finland's Subzero Film Entertainment, in collaboration with Will Clarke and Andy Mayson, of UK's Altitude Film Entertainment, and Jens Meurer, of Germany's Egoli Tossell Film. UK's Alex Garland will executive produce.

Jokirante, who also backed Helander's Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale - which was selected for the film festivals in Locarno and Toronto - has scheduled principal photography for locations in Finland and Germany, and with Munich's Bavaria Studio Film Partners. International sales are handled by UK's Altitude Film Sales.