Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’s Benjamin Walker and Teresa Palmer will play the leads in 2:22, a psychological thriller from Australian director Paul Currie.
Walker will play an air traffic controller who is spooked by an ominous pattern of events that repeats itself every day, ending at 2:22 pm.
Palmer is cast as the director of an art gallery who meets Walker's character after being a passenger in a plane which was involved in a near miss with another aircraft. Her life is threatened by these strange events and he must solve the mystery to save her. It's set in an unnamed US city.
Shooting is due to start in either Melbourne or Sydney in October/November. International sales agent Good Universe is pitching the project to buyers at the Cannes Film Market.
It will be the LA-based Currie’s second film as director; his first was One Perfect Day in 2004. His directing credits include episodes of TV's Twentysomething and the feature documentary Every Heart Beats True: The Jim Stynes Story.
The screenplay is based on an original concept by Todd Stein and Nathan Parker. Currie’s Lighstream Pictures will produce with Pandemonium’s Bill Mechanic and Walk The Walk Entertainment’s Steve Hutensky.
Walker is playing a young sea captain who is commissioned by King Louis XIV (Pierce Brosnan) to search the North Seas for a mermaid so he can steal her miraculous life force in Sean McNamara's The Moon and the Sun, a fantasy/adventure now shooting in Melbourne.
Currie and Mechanic are producing that film, which also stars Bill Hurt, Fan Bing Bing and Kaya Scodelario, with James Pang and Wei Han, also represented by Good Universe.
Walker will hang out with air traffic controllers to research the role after he wraps The Moon and the Sun. "Bill and I think he is super talented," Currie tells IF. "He has a leading man's presence, a Liam Neeson feel about him."