Vince Vaughn to Star in and Produce THE RISK AGENT
Vince Vaughn and his Wild West Picture Show Productions have acquired the rights to Ridley Pearson's thriller novel The Risk Agent. Vaughn will star in and produce the movie for Universal Pictures. The Risk Agent is the first book in a planned series. The thriller is set in China. "When a Chinese National working for an American-owned construction company is grabbed off the streets of Shanghai in broad daylight and his one-man security detail goes missing as well, the call goes out to Rutherford Risk. That firm specializes in hostage extraction, from negotiation to recovery. Since private investigation is illegal in China, the company recruits two experts. One, Grace Chu, is a female forensic accountant who follows the money; the other, John Knox, is well trained in both combat and culture. They overcome their differing styles to try and get the hostages back before it’s too late."
This is definitely new ground for Vaughn, we normally we the actor in comedic roles, and the few non-comedic films he has made haven't turned out very well. This sounds like it could be a solid movie though.
Here's the description from the novel that was released last month:
"Edward" Lu Hao has disappeared along with his bookkeeping of bribes he'd been paying out for an American multinational operating in Shanghai, China. The woman who'd helped Eddy win the job, Grace Chu, contracts out as a forensic accountant for an international security firm. Because of her connections, and her involvement, Grace is tasked with vetting the accounting of the multinational and finding Edward Lu's missing books.
John Knox, an import/export entrepreneur with friends in the same security company is recruited as a Shanghai insider to deliver the ransom and/or extract the hostage. But the China Knox knows so well is not the China he finds himself in. Immersed in a city of twenty million, with twenty million stories and twenty million motives, Knox and Grace team up to try to free multiple hostages, whatever the risk.
The stakes mount as fast as the lies. Dead ends are as common as hand carts on a Shanghai morning. With no one to trust, and nowhere to turn, Knox and Grace face unexpected hardship and unimagined enemies, with the "solution" anything but certain.
Vaughn's next film is The Watch. Does this down like a good project for Vaughn to take on? Or do you think he should stick to comedy?