Ali Fazal, the Hindi actor, is set to star in a leading role in the upcoming international action thriller film, Kandahar, which also stars Scottish actor and producer Gerard Butler.
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh, Kandahar marks Fazal’s third international venture after Victoria and Abdul and Kenneth Brannagh’s upcoming film, Death On The Nile, starring Gal Gadot. Fazal bagged one of the leads in the Brannagh directorial, which is set to release in February 2022.
Waugh developed the screenplay of Kandahar with former military intelligence officer Mitchell LaFortune. The story of the upcoming thriller is based on LaFortune’s experiences at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan.
Butler plays an undercover CIA operative, Tom Harris, who is stuck deep in hostile territory in Afghanistan, as per a Deadline report. Avoiding the elite special forces hunting him and his Afghan translator down, Harris has to fight his way out to an extraction point in Kandahar.
According to the report, Iranian-American actor Navid Negahban (Legion, Homeland) is also joining the cast.
Filming for Kandahar has already begun in Saudi Arabia’s striking northwestern AlUla region. It is the first big-budget US feature film to be shot in this area, which is home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hegra. The thriller will also be shot in Jeddah.
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Backed by the Saudi Film Commission, the film will recruit local crew and extras, and the producers have tapped into the local rebate scheme, as per the Deadline report.
Fazal is currently prepping for his role.
Kandahar is backed by Thunder Road Films, the producers of John Wick and Sicario, along with Butler’s G-BASE, Capstone Group, and the Middle East media group MBC Studios.
The film reunites Butler with his Greenland and Angel Has Fallen director Waugh.
The executive producers include David Haring, Scott LaStaiti, Ruzanna Kegeyan, Andrea Dimity and Jonathan Fuhrman.