Tradecraft: Focus Features to Distribute Bastille Day

Deadline reports that Focus Features has come aboard to distribute the Idris Elba neo-Eurospy thriller Bastille Day in North America. This one's been in the works for a while. We first heard about it back in 2012 when Taken director Pierre Morel was attached. He moved on (to The Gunman, another neo-Eurospy title), but even down a director the film gained a great lead last fall when Elba (Luther) signed on to star. Now James Watkins, who did an excellent job conjuring scares for Hammer in The Woman in Black, is attached to helm from Andrew Baldwin's script. (Baldwin is currently writing the next Bourne movie.) Additionally, French actress Adèle Exarchopoulos, who was electrifying in Blue Is the Warmest Color (one of my favorite movies of last year), is attached to co-star. According to the trade, the Paris-set thriller follows "a rogue CIA agent forced to team with an unsuspecting American con-artist to thwart a terrorist attack on French soil." Production is scheduled to get underway this summer.