Fresh off of having a run-in with the latest iteration of Ghostface in the new Scream movie, Kyle Gallner has signed on to star in the dramatic thriller The Passenger for Blumhouse Television and Epix. Directed by Carter Smith (The Ruins) from a screenplay by Jack Stanley, who has had multiple scripts featured on the Black List, The Passenger follows
Randolph Bradley, who is perfectly content fading into the background, but when his coworker Benson snaps and goes on a violent killing spree, he’s forced to face his fears and confront his troubled past in order to find a way to survive.
Gallner is taking on the role of the killer Benson, and Deadline reports that Randolph Bradley will be played by Johnny Berchtold (The Wilds).
The Passenger is being executive produced by Jason Blum, Chris McCumber, Jeremy Gold, and Lauren Downey.
Gallner is a genre regular whose previous credits include not only Scream but also Red (the Jack Ketchum adaptation), The Haunting in Connecticut, Jennifer’s Body, the 2010 A Nightmare on Elm Street, Red State, The Walking Dead, and Ghosts of War. He also worked with original Scream director Wes Craven on the thriller Red Eye. Having “red” in the title seems to be a good way to get Gallner interested in joining a movie’s cast.
Since making his feature directorial debut with The Ruins in 2008, Smith has directed Jamie Marks Is Dead and the Midnight Kiss entry in Blumhouse’s Hulu series Into the Dark.
The Passenger is one of eight films Blumhouse is producing for the Epix premium cable outlet. Other entries in this series include include A House on the Bayou, American Refugee, Unhuman, Tattered Hearts, The Visitor, and There’s Something Wrong with the Children.
I like watching these Blumhouse series (in addition to Into the Dark on Hulu, they also produced a series of films for Amazon under the Welcome to the Blumhouse banner), I enjoyed Smith’s previous genre contributions, and I’m a fan of Gallner, so I’ll definitely be checking out The Passenger. No offense intended to Johnny Berchtold by not mentioning him in that line-up, this will just be my first time seeing him in anything.