Kurt Russell to star in thriller Undying

Six years ago, Media 8 announced the upcoming production of REAPER, a supernatural detective movie written by Gary Whitta (THE BOOK OF ELI). Now in 2010, they’ve signed Kurt Russell to star in the film and filming is set to begin this fall. (Hey, sometimes the fasttrack ain’t so fast…)

While Whitta went on to write ELI and a draft of AKIRA for Warner Bros., REAPER was his first script sale. The film will now be untitled UNDYING (yaaaaawn) with Russell starring as private investigator Virgil Lone. Because the title UNDYING is ridiculously generic, here’s a little bit about the film:

[UNDYING] tells the story of Virgil, a private investigator who finds himself recruited by the darkly beautiful and mysterious Delia. As he begins to work for Delia, Virgil finds himself suddenly immersed in a surreal underworld, one where the boundaries of life and death – as well as right and wrong –are completely blurred. This unlikely journey also reveals the harrowing answers to the fate of Virgil’s own daughter.

The film was originally described as SEVEN meets BLADE RUNNER, which along with Kurt Russell, sounds like a no-brainer, but a lot of films have billed themselves as a mix of SEVEN and/or BLADE RUNNER and come nowhere close.

Frankly I just wish Russell could be getting the kind of roles that Jeff Bridges is currently doing. Maybe Disney will considering doing a big sci-fi/Kubrickian THE COMPUTER WHO WORE TENNIS SHOES 2.0 and bring Russell back for that…