24 HOURS TO LIVE Brings Aboard Common And Xu Qing For Brian Smrz's New Action Thriller

Sierra/Affinity is continuing its PR efforts at Cannes starting this week for the upcoming action thriller, 24 Hours To Live following their earlier EFM run. The film is also one of several films now being planned for select distribution through immersive digital theater brand Barco Escape with Shanghai-based production and distribution company Fundamental Films fully financing, and with actor Ethan Hawke (The Purge, Getaway) starring as of February.

This week, word from Deadline now accompanies Hawke’s casting with that of actor Common and Chinese actress Xu Qing. Details surrounding their respective character portrayals are unknown while, under stunt veteran and director Brian Smrz, it is Hawke himself who will play a career assassin who dies during a job, and is subsequently granted one day to redeem himself after being resurrected by his employer.

Thunder Road’s Kent Kubena and Jonathan Fuhrman and Fundemental Film’s Gary Glushon are executive producing from Zachary Dean’s story based on an original script by Ron Mita and Jim McClain. The film will mark a sophmore entry for Smrz following his 2008 directorial debut, Hero Wanted (2008) and credits such as Face-Off (1998), Mission: Impossible 2 (2002), Live Free Or Die Hard (2007), X-Men: First Class (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013) and X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014).

Qing, best known for her role as Police Madam Lau in Wilson Yip’s 2007 Donnie Yen actioner, Flash Point, and as Bruce Willis’s on-screen romantic interest in Rian Johnson’s Looper in 2012, can be seen in Guan Hu’s latest crime pic, Mr. Six. Common, following his recent stint in Jaume Collet-Serra’s Run All Night will appear this August in David Ayer’s DC adaptation, Suicide Squad, and in Chad Stahelski’s John Wick: Chapter Two on February 16, 2017.

Hawke is one of an ensemble cast for Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven, which hits screens on September 23.