It’s a balls-the-wall action extravaganza in the first trailer for Copshop, as Hollywood hard-men Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo go toe-to-toe. Both actors have carved careers out of making shamelessly explosive action flicks, and bringing the pair together for the first time looks to have resulted in something pretty wild.
Screaming through the Nevada desert in a bullet-ridden Crown Vic, wily con artist Teddy Murretto (Frank Grillo) hatches a desperate plan to hide out from lethal hitman Bob Viddick (Gerard Butler): He sucker-punches rookie officer Valerie Young (Alexis Louder) to get himself arrested and locked up in a small-town police station. But jail can’t protect Murretto for long. Viddick schemes his own way into detention, biding his time in a nearby cell until he can complete his mission. When the arrival of a competing assassin (Toby Huss) ignites all-out mayhem, mounting threats force Viddick to get creative if he wants to finish the job and escape the explosive situation.
RELATED: Copshop Teams Gerard Butler and Frank Grillo with The Grey Director Joe Carnahan
With Gerard Butler as Viddick, a professional hitman and Frank Grillo as Teddy, a con artist, Copshop looks to be full of ridiculous characters, vibrant title screens, and loud action sequences, which will hopefully all come together and thus result in the perfect kind of over-the-top, B-movie style action romp. Thanks to the presence of both Butler and Grillo, the grizzled grit on display will no doubt provide a large, testosterone-filled knuckle sandwich to the faces of action movie fans everywhere.
Helmed by The Grey director Joe Carnahan, Copshop has undergone several rewrites over the years, with Kurt McLeod penning the original screenplay, which is based on a story by McLeod and Mark Williams. Carnahan meanwhile is behind the most recent draft. Starring Alexis Louder as Harper, a rookie police officer, Toby Huss as Anthony Lamb, a mobster, Ryan O’Nan as Huber, and Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau as Barnes.
Joe Carnahan and Frank Grillo have discussed the project in the past, with the pair saying in a joint statement; “We feel that this is a movie that can play big globally but be made sensibly, and we are always looking for this type of ‘elevated genre’ where the writing really drives the action and the drama. We also couldn’t be happier to have someone with the box-office power of Gerard Butler as our partner in crime on this film.”
Aside from delightfully chewing the scenery in Copshop, Gerard Butler has several big action flicks in the pipeline, including sequels to both the Olympus Has Fallen franchise, and for 2018’s gritty crime thriller Den of Thieves. Butler is also due to return to the post-apocalyptic world of Greenland in upcoming sequel Greenland: Migration, which will find the Garrity family leaving the safety of the bunker and embarking on a perilous journey across the decimated frozen wasteland of Europe to find a new home.
As for Grillo, who has become well-known for roles in the likes of The Purge: Anarchy and Warrior, he too will continue to fly the flag for action cinema with the likes of The Gateway, A Day to Die, and M.I.A. Copshop is scheduled to be released in the United States by Open Road Films on September 17, 2021.
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