According to Deadline, production on Ric Roman Waugh’s newest Gerard Butler-led action pic Kandahar has officially begun in Saudi Arabia. This marks the first high-profile Hollywood project to be able to film in the country’s AlUla region. In addition, Ali Fazal (Death on The Nile), and Navid Negahban (Legion) have also been cast.
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Kandahar is being directed by Ric Roman Waugh, who co-wrote the script with former military intelligence officer Mitchell LaFortune. It is being based on the real-life experiences of LaFortune in Afghanistan during the time of the Snowden leaks.
“In the film, an undercover CIA operative named Tom Harris, who is assigned in the Middle East,” reads the synopsis. “An intelligence leak dangerously exposes his classified mission and reveals his covert identity. Stuck in the heart of hostile territory, Harris and his translator must fight their way out of the desert to an extraction point in Kandahar, Afghanistan, while eluding the elite special forces hunting them.”
The film is being produced by Butler & Alan Siegel for G-Base, Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk, Brendon Boyea, & Erica Lee, and Capstone Group’s Christian Mercuri, with Capstone and MBC Studios financing the project. David Haring, Scott LaStaiti, Ruzanna Kegeyan, Andrea Dimity, and Jonathan Fuhrman are executive producing.
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This project marks the latest collaboration between Butler and Waugh, who previously worked on Angel Has Fallen, and the disaster thriller Greenland. They are set to reunite on the said films’ respective sequels, Night Has Fallen, and Greenland: Migration.
