Until last week, all we knew about the casting of Steven Soderbergh’s Knockout was that martial arts star Gina Carano would be making her movie debut in the lead role of a black ops spy, who is betrayed and goes on the run in order to prove her innocence and find out who is framing her.
Then on Friday we discovered Ewan McGregor, Dennis Quaid and Michael Douglas were also onboard the movie, and now come news, via The Playlist, that Channing Tatum has joined Knockout and Antonio Bandera is in talks.
Tatum will play Aaron, one of the elite specialists who was on Carano’s black ops team, and is then sent to retrieve her once she goes AWOL. Apparently it’s not that big a role, but made a bit more juicy by the fact Tatum and Channing’s characters don’t like each other. The part is said to have been offered to several other major action stars, but they weren’t that keen on being beaten to a pulp by a woman.
Banderas meanwhile is in talks to play the head of a European black ops unit.
It sounds like Knockout is going to feature all manner of double-crossing and reversals of allegiance, where you’re never sure who to trust, or who is behind setting Carano up to take the fall for an incident that went wrong and ended up with a murder.
The film is due to star shooting next month in Barcelona, Dublin and New Mexico. Perhaps most impressively, while they’re not even filming until February, Lionsgate are hoping to have the film in cinemas by August! Although that’s a schedule most movies could never live up to, Steven Soderbergh is well known for shooting and editing incredibly fast.