Almost three years have gone by since we first heard about the comedic sci-fi virus thriller Cold Storage, which went into production two years ago, and now Variety has provided a major update on the project: Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired the North American distribution rights and are planning to give the film a nationwide theatrical release later this year.
Doctor Who and Westworld director Jonny Campbell took the helm of Cold Storage, working from a screenplay by David Koepp. Koepp has been one of the biggest screenwriters in Hollywood for about thirty years at this point, having worked on such films as Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Panic Room, Spider-Man, War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and The Mummy. Koepp wrote the script for Cold Storage based on his 2019 novel of the same name, which you can pick up at THIS LINK. The film tells the following story: Several decades ago, a highly infectious, constantly mutating micro-organism — capable of extinction-level destruction — was contained in a military facility. In the present day, the military has sealed the facility’s lowest sublevel selling the remaining space to a self-storage company. As temperatures rise underground, the micro-organism finds a way to escape — and if left to spread, it will soon uncontrollably multiply around the world. The fate of humanity now rests on a retired bioterror operative and two unlikely heroes employed in the facility, who are caught in a race against time to destroy the organism and save mankind.
The cast includes Liam Neeson (Taken), Joe Keery (Stranger Things), Georgina Campbell (Barbarian), Sosie Bacon (Smile), and Vanessa Redgrave (Mission: Impossible). Another version of the synopsis tells us that the story follows Teacake (Keery) and Naomi (Campbell), two employees at a self-storage facility built atop a former military base, whose night shift transforms into a nightmare when a government-sealed parasitic fungus escapes from the underground levels. As temperatures rise, the microorganism unleashes its brain-controlling, body-bursting mayhem on anything in its path. The duo must join forces with a weathered bioterror operative (Neeson) to contain the threat before it triggers humanity’s extinction.
Gavin Polone is producing Cold Storage, with Studiocanal’s Shana Eddy Grouf, Ron Halpern, and Aaron Ensweiler overseeing. Koepp has previously said that Cold Storage will have “everything I’d want to see in a movie; it’s scary, funny, exhilarating, surprising, and riotously entertaining. Gavin, Jonny and I have huge ambitions for this.“
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