09/02/2024 - The project is financed by UK studio Anton who will be selling the world rights at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin

Actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson (left, © Han Myung-Gu/WireImage) and director David Mackenzie (right, © Thierry Sollerot)

English actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who broke through with his performance playing John Lennon in Nowhere Boy [+see also:
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film profile] in 2009 and is set to appear in Robert Eggers’ highly anticipated Nosferatu later this year, already worked with Scottish director David Mackenzie in 2018 on Outlaw King [+see also:
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film profile]. The feature film, distributed by Netflix following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, told the story of Robert the Bruce and the Scottish War of Independence. Mackenzie’s earlier effort, 2016’s Hell or High Water, was a Texas-set crime/heist drama that premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard and went on to garner four Oscar nominations. His 2013 prison drama Starred Up [+see also:
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trailer
interview: David Mackenzie
film profile] launched the career of British actor Jack O'Connell. 

A heist is also at the centre of the announced Fuze, whose screenplay was written by Berlin-based screenwriter and novelist Ben Hopkins, also behind Vasilis Katsoupis’ Inside [+see also:
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interview: Vasilis Katsoupis
film profile] which premiered in Berlinale Panorama in 2023 and stars Willem Dafoe. The synopsis reads: Fuze opens on the discovery of an unexploded World War II bomb in a London construction site, sparking a mass evacuation – the perfect cover for a heist.

The film is produced by Gillian Berrie for Mackenzie’s own Glasgow-based company Sigma Films, and by Sebastien Raybaud and Callum Grant for Anton (also behind recent British title The End We Start From [+see also:
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film profile]). The project will also reunite Mackenzie with Hell or High Water cinematographer Giles Nuttgens (who also shot Michael Winterbottom’s Shoshana [+see also:
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trailer
film profile]). 

Anton, who are financing the film, will be selling the world rights at the upcoming European Film Market in Berlin where they will also be presenting a sizzle reel for the film.