Sacrifice: Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Salma Hayek Pinault, Brendan Fraser cast in violent radicals satire

French filmmaker Romain Gavras, whose previous credits include the drama Our Day Will Come, the crime comedy The World Is Yours, and the thriller Athena, is set to make his English-language debut with a new film called Sacrifice, and he has assembled a jaw-dropping cast for it. Deadline reports that Sacrifice, which is described as having “a similar combustible and propulsive anarchy” to Athena while being “closer to satire,” is set to star Chris Evans (Avengers: Endgame), Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga), Salma Hayek Pinault (Magic Mike’s Last Dance), and Brendan Fraser (The Whale).

Scripted by Gavras and Will Arbery (who won a WGA award for working on Succession), Sacrifice will show us what happens when a high end charity gala is raided by a violent group of radicals on a mystical quest to fulfill a prophecy. The script was just sent out to talent four days ago, and the actors mentioned above have all signed on within that time.

CAA Media Finance and Rocket Science will be presenting the project to potential buyers at the Cannes Film Market that coincides with the Cannes Film Festival, where Taylor-Joy will be attending the premiere of Furiosa. Most distribution deals are expected to be locked up before they even get to Cannes, though.

Taylor-Joy will be taking on the role of Sacrifice‘s “passionate antagonist,” while “Evans will play the movie star she has tapped to die, along with the two others.”

Gavras, who is the son of filmmaker Costa Gavras and producer/journalist Michele Ray-Gavras, told Deadline, “It came from a very simple idea, which is every time you go to those events, whether it’s in Cannes, whether it’s a charity event and where you have all those people, the mischievous side of me, and I think the audience as well when they’re watching those events, they kind of want something to go really horribly wrong. When you see glitzy people and all the shininess and all that stuff, you want that moment to be twisted, right? I was raised myself on Greek mythology. Instead of being fed new movies when I was a kid, my parents were telling me these Greek tales, where a mom eats her kids and of sacrifices to volcanoes. Those things fed me and led to the idea of having a group of kids that have a very specific agenda that comes from a very mythological kind of belief system. There is the fondness of satire and Will is amazing at the sharpness of the tone of the characters and the humanity of them.“

Sacrifice is expected to go into production in September. Does this project sound interesting to you? What do you think of the cast? Let us know by leaving a comment below.