Cannes has been especially busy this year with an enormous abundance of new features hitting the buyer’s circuit at the international festival, and another has now officially been added to the docket. As per Deadline, principal photography has wrapped in Malta on a new action-thriller film titled Classified, which stars acclaimed actors Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin, and Tim Roth.
Classified is an action-packed thriller helmed by Dutch director Roel Reine, who previously worked on big credit projects like Netflix’s Fistful of Vengeance (2022) and Paramount’s HALO (2022). Bob DeRosa, scriptwriter for the feature, previously wrote romantic action comedy Killers (2010), which starred Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher. He also worked on series like White Collar (2012), Video Palace (2018), and 20 Seconds to Live (2015-19). Producers on the project include Gabriel George, along with Ellen Wander and Jordan Dykstra of Film Bridge International, which is currently shopping the film at Cannes. While more specific details about the plot and cast are still being kept underwraps, the lead stars include Aaron Eckhart (Wander), Abigail Breslin (Stillwater), and Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs).
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The premise of the film is an international espionage plot line interwoven with an emotional father-daughter relationship sub-story. The father in question (Eckhart) is a veteran CIA hitman who has been picking up his jobs via the classifieds section of the newspaper for the past 20 years. His long-lost daughter (Breslin) is a UK M16 analyst who reveals to him that his boss at the CIA has actually been dead for years, and that the division he’s worked for has been dead in the water nearly as long. They work together to investigate where the true source of his directives has been coming from.
Director Roel Reine said of the production experience on Classified:
“It was an honor to work with this cast of talented actors. Aaron brought an engaging, emotional depth to his portrayal of an assassin searching for his place in a corrupt world…Malta provided the perfect backdrop for this epic action movie.”
Related: Aaron Eckhart’s 6 Best Performances, Ranked
Malta is Proving to Be a Serious Filming Hotspot
While the most bustling production studios continue to be located domestically across the US, despite the WGA strike currently going on, Malta has proven to be a serious hotspot the past few years or so for both film and television alike. The island archipelago in between Italy and Libya has become home to a number of big productions over the past several decades, but it has been especially frequented lately. Main reasons include its exceptionally scenic backdrops and incredibly diverse architecture, much of it medieval.
Some of the biggest credits there include all seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones, along with various big-budget period films like Gladiator (2000), Alexander (2004), Troy (2004), Munich (2005). Other big blockbusters filmed there include The Da Vinci Code (2006), World War Z (2013), Captain Phillips (2013), the live-action adaptation of Assassin’s Creed (2016), Jurassic World Dominion (2022), and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon (2023). Netflix’s upcoming WWII drama series All The Light We Cannot See also recently finished shooting there.
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