While much of the attention surrounding Idris Elba has been for his role in George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, he’s got another summer film on the way. This one is a vastly different beast, literally, as Elba finds himself fighting off a deadly lion in the new survival thriller, Beast.
The film is directed by Baltasar Kornakur, known for another survival flick, Everest. He plays Dr. Nate Daniels, who along with his two daughters find themselves on the run from a rogue lion driven mad by its escape from bloodthirsty poachers.
Also in the cast are Sharlto Copley, Iyana Halley, and Leah Sava Jeffries. The script is by Rampage writer Ryan Engle, with Will Packer producing.
Beast opens in theaters on August 19th.
Elba plays Dr. Nate Daniels, a recently widowed husband who returns to South Africa, where he first met his wife, on a long-planned trip with their daughters to a game reserve managed by Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley, Russian Doll series, Maleficent), an old family friend and wildlife biologist. But what begins as a journey of healing jolts into a fearsome fight for survival when a lion, a survivor of blood-thirsty poachers who now sees all humans as the enemy, begins stalking them.
