John Cena is in talks to take on his next major role in Taken director Pierre Morel’s action-comedy, Freelance. The film is being set up for sale by Stuart Ford’s AGC at the upcoming American Film Market.
The film follows a special forces operator (Cena) who decides to retire from the Army and start a family back in the states. After several years of mortgage payments, school drop-offs, backyard barbecues and trying to conform to life in suburbia, he decides to come out of retirement to take a gig providing security for a female journalist as she interviews a cruel dictator who may or may not have ordered the attack on him and his men. When a military coup breaks out in the middle of the interview, the three are forced to escape into the jungle where they must survive the elements, the military, and one another.
Freelance, which is budgeted at about $40 million, is due to start filming next year in Colombia and is set to be among the in-demand action film packages at the AFM, which begins on November 1. In addition to Morel directing, writer Jacob Lentz, from Jimmy Kimmel Live!, makes his feature writing debut on the project. Cena is the only casting that has been completed as of this writing and additional casting is still in process.
Cena is a very busy man lately having appeared in Fast 9, The Suicide Squad, and Vacation Friends this year. In addition to those films, he has HBO Max’s The Peacemaker airing in January which will have him reprising his role from The Suicide Squad. It’s like that he will be in Fast 10 and it was already announced that a sequel to Vacation Friends is in the works.
Are YOU interested in seeing Freelance?