Updated as of Thursday, April 9, 2020.
Italian-American actor Massi Furlan is in talks to join Ranjeet S. Marwa’s Blood Rush, which remains in active development under Marwa’s independent Rocket Sky High film label. Marwa also confirmed with FCSyndicate on Wednesday that Malaysian stunt performer, actor Hairul Azreen is officially joining the feature thriller; Balinese actor Oka Antara (Foxtrot Six, The Raid 2) was previously attached following reported talks last week but has since departed the project due to scheduling concerns.
Details on the roles for both Furlan and Azreen remain under wraps. Zack Lee (The Night Comes For Us, Headshot) makes his lead debut on Blood Rush from a script by Marwa, with an ensemble cast bustling with fervor listing the likes of Sunny Pang (The Night Comes For Us), Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman (John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum), Nathan Jones (Tom Yum Goong, Jet Li’s Fearless) and Grace Teo (The Driver), as well as a few other names circling the project as we speak.
The plot? Lee plays Max Wayan, a widower who joins an underworld cult in the wake of the deaths of his wife and child. Trapped in an inescapable cycle of violence he wants no part of, he’ll be forced to confront his inner-demons and fight his way out at any cost.
Marwa has been actively brewing Blood Rush since announcing it earlier this year. The global outbreak of Covid-19 eventually forced production plans to scale back from its originally planned summer shoot in Jakarta to late August/mid-September.
Furlan, whose credits also partly include The Dark Knight Rises, Live By Night, and Jumanji 2: The Next Level, is coming off the explosive success of Bad Boys For Life, Sony’s long-awaited threequel with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. The film earned a domestic total of more than $204 million dollars at the box office, and another $214 million internationally, and is now available on DVD, Blu-Ray and Digital.
Azreen has been acting since 2011, and eventually made even greater headway appearing in director Adrian Teh’s 2018 military actioner, Paskal – which is currently running in the U.S. on Netflix – billed as the most expensive Malaysian feature film ever made. Other local film credits for Azreen include Operasi X, Polis Evo 2, and once more for Teh’s 2019 man-on-a-mission action thriller, Wira, which also features Ruhian.