Trailer: Idris Elba Neo-Eurospy Movie Bastille Day

StudioCanal have announced an April 22 UK release date for the Idris Elba neo-Eurospy movie Bastille Day, and released the first trailer. Variety reported last November that the distributor was re-evaluating their release schedule in the wake of the shocking real-life Paris terror attacks. (It was originally due out in February.) Bastille Day will open in France on, appropriately, July 13, just in time for the real Bastille Day celebrations. Focus Features has yet to set a U.S. release date. Directed by James Watkins (The Woman in Black), Bastille Day stars Elba (The Gunman) as a CIA agent who teams up with a pickpocket (Richard Madden) to stop a terrorist attack from being carried out in Paris in the next 24 hours. The premise seems pretty similar to another neo-Eurospy movie, From Paris With Love, but the execution and tone look sufficiently different. Check it out:

International Trailer for The Gunman

Here's the international trailer for Pierre Morel's latest neo-Eurospy moive, The Gunman, starring Sean Penn, Idris Elba and the great Javier Bardem. It shows a little more than the previous domestic trailer, but mainly shows why Morel is the reigning grandmaster of the neo-Eurospy genre. With furious action spanning the Congo, London, Barcelona and Gibraltar, this doesn't look like a very faithful adaptation of the cult French noir novel Prone Gunman, but it does look like a pretty worthy follow-up to Taken and From Paris With Love! (If only Morel had continued to direct the Taken movies!) The Gunman opens March 20.

Tradecraft: Idris Elba Takes Lead in Bastille Day

We haven't heard about the neo-Eurospy movie Bastille Day in quite a while - in a year, actually. Last we heard, Taken and From Paris With Love director Pierre Morel was attached, but he's moved on to other stuff since then. (Namely, The Gunman, starring Sean Penn.) Now, however, Bastille Day seems to be moving forward once more, with a major star attached: the awesome Idris Elba (who also co-stars in The Gunman). Variety reports that Vendome Pictures and Anonymous Content will produce, and no director is currently attached. According to the trade, "the story revolves around a U.S. operative who is tasked with interrogating and eventually making a young American boy 'disappear' in order to avoid embarrassment to the U.S. government after the boy is linked as the prime suspect to an attack on the Paris metro. After several more attacks, the operative realizes the boy is innocent and may be the only link to the person actually orchestrating the attacks."