James Gunn, Greg McLean subject John Gallagher Jr. to The Belko Experiment

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY director James Gunn took to Facebook to announce that John Gallagher Jr. has landed a lead role in THE BELKO EXPERIMENT, a thriller Gunn wrote for MGM that will soon be heading into production with WOLF CREEK's Greg McLean at the helm.

Gunn had this to say about the actor:

"A couple years ago John Gallagher Jr. auditioned for me for a role. You might know him from his fantastic work in the movie Short Term 12 or on the TV show The Newsroom. He didn’t get the role that day — he wasn’t right for the part — but when he walked out of the room I turned to the casting director and said, ‘That’s one of the best actors I’ve seen in my life, and perhaps the best audition I’ve ever seen.’ I became determined to find a way to work with him. Well, I’m proud to announce that day is today, as John will play Mike Pelk, one of the leads of our film 'The Belko Experiment.'"

Filming begins in Bogota, Colombia in June. THE BELKO EXPERIMENT is about

an American company in South America that is mysteriously sealed off at the beginning of a workday, and its employees are ordered to kill each other or be killed themselves. This starts an escalation of violence, where we discover the true nature of each and every Belko employee.

While I'm not all that familiar with John Gallagher Jr., the pairing of Gunn and McLean is a very promising one. The concept sounds rather simple on the surface, but could provide some good suspense and unsettling moments, especially if the Belko employees get even slightly as vicious with each other as McLean's WOLF CREEK villain Mick Taylor gets with his victims. This is definitely one to keep an eye on.

Gallagher's co-star on THE NEWSROOM, Olivia Munn