Planning your own death is a complicated business, especially if you need others to help you pull it off. What at first seems like a cut-and-dried plan can quickly spiral out of control as your accomplices get ideas of their own. If you’re not careful, the people trying to help you slip out of the public view will turn on you, dollar signs dancing in their eyes. Jack Wolfe (Samuel L. Jackson) is about to learn the hard way that you can’t trust others when $30 million of your fortune is on the line, and that includes your wife, who wants everything you have for herself.
In the new trailer for Just Play Dead from Head Gear Films and Gemstone Films, a wealthy criminal mastermind, Jack Wolfe (Jackson), is cornered by the Feds, but you can’t arrest a dead man. His plan is simple: fake his death and claim a $30 million insurance payout with his grieving wife, Nora (Eva Green). To clean up the loose ends, they’ll frame her surfer lover, Chad (Jason Fernández). But Nora, suffocated by Jack’s ruthless control, has her own scheme: kill Jack for real, frame Chad, and keep the fortune for herself. Jack, always a step ahead, sets a deadly trap, turning the unsuspecting lovers against each other.
Martin Campbell (Cleaner, Casino Royale) directs Just Play Dead from a script by Dan Gordon (The Hurricane, Murder in the First), with Eoin Macken, María Pedraza, and Jason Fernández joining Jackson and Green for a complicated game of deception, murder, and insurance fraud.
Today’s Just Play Dead trailer highlights Jackson and Green’s on-screen chemistry, while presenting the pieces for a devious game of 4-D chess. $30 million is the type of money that could set you up for life, making it easy to understand why everyone is willing to go above and beyond, even kill, to get their hands on it. If you’re careful, a single act of deception could make all your financial troubles go away—assuming you can survive the people trying to help you pull it off.
Just Play Dead is coming to select theaters on August 28 and to on-demand platforms on September 1.