It was last October when Mark Gill (former president of Warner Independent Pictures, Miramax Films and Millennium Films) launched Solstice Studios. Joined by production heads Andrew Gunn (Freaky Friday, Cruella) and Guy Botham, and Marketing and lead strategist Vincent Bruzzese, the company’s aim, as it stands, is to produce low-to-median budgeted films with global appeal – primarily in the action, thriller and action-comedy genres for wide release next to its other acquisition endeavors.
As of Wednesday, the company has officially outlined its first production with cerebral action thriller, Split Second. Mike Fleming Jr. has the exclusive at Deadline:
Scripted by former military intelligence officer Mitchell LaFortune, Split Second is an action thriller about an assassin who suffers a psychological break when he is ordered to kill the woman who is his lifeline. The story follows two versions of the same character: one who pulls the trigger and descends into madness, the other who takes the road to redemption and goes on the run with her.
Split Second will be the first in a plan for the company to produce three-to-five films annually for a global audience. Solstice launched back in October with $400 million dollars in capitalization, joining in partnership with Ingenious Media for its current business model; Ingenious shares $150 million dollars of the weight.
“Our focus will be those wide-release films, which US theaters want, Americans still go to see, and which drive international independent distributors’ slates,” Gill said in a statement last year.
Gill’s own $2.1 billion dollar track record accompanies thirty years of experience and a background in marketing (at Columbia Pictures), and with credits like Pulp Fiction, The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Chicago, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Frida, March of the Penguins, Good Night, and Good Luck, as well as Gerard Butler headliners Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen, and Patrick Hughes’s 2017 hit action comedy, The Hitman’s Bodyguard.