Off the heels of a rousing debut at TIFF, Deadline reported Wolf Creek 1 and 2 helmer Greg McLean’s The Belko Experiment was the first to land a deal over the weekend. Orion will be releasing the film in association with Blumhouse’s BH Tilt for the film’s U.S. release on March 17, 2017.
Working from an acerbic, take-no-prisoners script by James Gunn (Slither, Guardians of the Galaxy), director Greg McLean (Wolf Creek) brings workplace stress to a whole new level with The Belko Experiment, a savage (and savagely funny) horror thriller where office politics turn into a real-life case of survival of the fittest.
It at first seems to be an ordinary morning on the job for a group of Americans working for a not-for-profit in a modern office building in Colombia. After noticing that their Colombian colleagues have not arrived for work, office worker Mike (John Gallagher, Jr.) spots some unfamiliar security guards entering a large hangar nearby. Moments later, an icy voice comes over the building’s PA system and calmly explains that the employees must kill a certain number of their co-workers — if not, they will be killed themselves. While the boss (Tony Goldwyn) tries to calm the troops, Mike belatedly realizes that something truly sinister is going on — and when metal doors come sliding down on all the building’s exits and windows, it becomes clear that friends and colleagues are now suddenly enemies in a bloody and brutal battle to the death.
McLean stacks the film’s office-turned-gladiator arena with a great cast of character actors — including John C. McGinley and Gunn regulars Michael Rooker, Sean Gunn, and Gregg Henry — who make all the daily-grind clichés feel spot on. The Belko Experiment balances pitch-black humour and shocking violence with a timely meditation on morality in an age of rampant, random violence.