Kerry Washington and Steven Yeun have joined Ben Affleck and Gillian Anderson in Animals, the kidnapping thriller Affleck is directing for Netflix.
The castings underscore the heat the project is generating now that it is back on track after being sidelined for a year. Animals is heading towards an April start in Los Angeles. The producers pushed for the L.A. shoot, with a desire to keep jobs within the community, and reinforce the city as a hub for filmmaking.
Written by Connor McIntyre with revisions by Billy Ray, the crime thriller concerns a mayoral candidate and his wife whose son is kidnapped. Surrounded by plenty of enemies, political and otherwise, the husband and wife have no choice but to get their hands dirty in order to save their son.
Affleck plays the candidate, while Washington plays his wife. Anderson is a fixer while Yeun is the candidate’s campaign manager. (Yeun was earmarked for the role in the project’s previous incarnation.)
Affleck and Matt Damon will produce via their Artists Equity, along with the company’s Dani Bernfeld. Also producing are Brad Weston and Collin Creighton via their MakeReady banner. Fifth Season, the production, sales and distribution company formerly known as Endeavor Content, will also produce. The company developed the project in partnership with MakeReady.
Artists Equity’s Michael Joe, Kevin Halloran and Lucy Damon will serve as executive producers alongside Fifth Season.
Both Washington and Yeun are popular within the Netflix fold. Washington is coming off of leading Tyler Perry’s hugely successful film The Six Triple Eight, the World War Two drama that garnered 52.4 million views in its first four weeks on Netflix, and will next be seen in the third installment of Rian Johnson’s mystery franchise Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
Animals puts Yeun back in business with not just Netflix but with Artists Equity as the actor stars with Affleck and Damon in RIP, an upcoming crime thriller directed by Joe Carnahan. Yeun also starred with Ali Wong in season one of Beef, the 2023 black comedy that earned him an Emmy Award for outstanding lead actor in a limited or anthology series or movie.
Washington is repped by CAA, Washington Square Arts, the Lede Company and Hanson Jacobsen.
Yeun, who next appears opposite Robert Pattinson in Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, is repped by WME and Hansen Jacobson.
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