Bill Skarsgård, Samara Weaving and Yayan Ruhian will topline Boy Kills World, a revenge action fantasy film produced by Sam Raimi and Roy Lee.
First-time feature director Moritz Mohr is helming the project, which is being financed by Simon Swart and Wayne Fitzjohn of Nthibah Pictures (Redeeming Love) and Alex Lebovici of Hammerstone Studios (Bill and Ted Face the Music).
Per the producers, who announced the project Thursday, World is described as “a one-of-a-kind action spectacle set in a dystopian fever dream reality. Boy is a deaf-mute with a vibrant imagination. When his family is murdered, Boy escapes to the jungle and is trained by a mysterious shaman to repress his childish imagination and become an instrument of death.”
Skarsgård will play Boy, with Ruhian as the shaman who mentors him. Weaving will play an assassin named June 27.
German-born Mohr attended UCLA’s film program before launching a commercial directing career. He created a Boy Kills World short in 2018 and made a previsualization reel for a feature version that caught the eye of Raimi and Lee.
Mohr and Arend Remmers came up with the story, with Remmers and Tyler Burton Smith (Kung Fury: The Movie) penning the script.
CAA Media Finance will represent domestic rights and also arranged financing. Zainab Azizi of Raimi Productions, Stuart Manashil of Novo, Dan Kagan and Andrew Childs of Vertigo Entertainment are producing in addition to Raimi and Lee.
Production is due to take place in early 2022 in South Africa.
“Boy Kills World is set in a distinct dystopian world, combining real-world themes with a stylized look that is fresh, cool and original, borrowing from the best of graphic novels,” said Nthibah Pictures CEO Simon Swart in a statement. “With a script that combines wild innovative action sequences, a sense of humor and a lot of crazy, this film has the potential to be a worldwide hit and potential franchise property.”
Skarsgård is best known for his scare work as Pennywise in the It movies, on which Lee was a producer. He is coming off of working on John Wick 4.
Weaving broke out with a starring turn in the horror movie Ready or Not and is currently shooting Damien Chazelle’s period drama Babylon with Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.
Ruhian is the martial arts actor who broke out to American audiences with the bone-breaking The Raid movies and appeared in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum.
Skarsgård is repped by WME and Magnolia. Weaving is repped by WME, while Ruhian is repped by Management 360 and Intan Melvina. Mohr is repped by CAA and Novo.
Source: HollyWood
