Mike Fleming

Chris Hemsworth Shadow RunnersEXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures has set the writing team of Chris Cantwell & Chris Rogers to script Shadow Runners, an action vehicle for Thor star Chris Hemsworth. The studio acquired the pitch last summer, with Tripp Vinson, Beau Flynn and ROAR’s Will Ward producing. I’m told that Simon Kinberg is also coming aboard the project as a producer. Project is a big priority for the studio, though it will have to work around Hemsworth’s plans for another Thor film and a sequel to The Avengers.

Vinson worked with Hemsworth on the Red Dawn remake and Ward is his manager. The pitch was hatched by Drive scribe Hossein Amini, who’ll be exec producer, and it was somewhat inspired by the incident in which a group of Israeli operatives infiltrated a hotel in Dubai to kill a Hamas leader, only to see the rendezvous captured on surveillance cameras. In the fictionalized thriller, Hemsworth will play a former Navy SEAL who tries to recapture his potential and repair a rift with an old comrade in arms, as he leads a team of elite international operatives on a mission against a mysterious enemy.

The scribes wrote The Knoll, which made last year’s Black List, and they set up Off The Grid at Indian Paintbrush. They also recently closed a deal to write an untitled project for Bad Robot. Cantwell & Rogers are repped by Verve and Management 360.