From left: Katherine McNamara, Carla Woodcock, Kate Beckinsale Daniele Venturelli, Jemima Marriott, Araya Doheny Carla Woodcock (Starz’s Outlander) has signed on to play the lead in White, the upcoming shark survival thriller from horror director Jake West (Evil Aliens), The Hollywood Reporter has learned exclusively.
Woodcock will play Willa Harba, which the film’s press copy describes as “a struggling actress trying to catch her big break” who is traveling overseas for a shoot with a self-obsessed star when their private jet crashes into the Pacific. Willa is the sole survivor, stranded on a broken wing in the middle of the ocean with only a satellite phone to link her to the outside world. But when she calls her demanding studio boss (played by Kate Beckinsale) for help, she brushes her off. Her signal gets picked up by a marine biologist Sam Swatek (Katherine McNamara), who has some bad news: Willa has crashed landed in the middle of White Shark Café, a stretch of ocean where great whites gather to feed.
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West is directing White from a screenplay by Dan Schaffer, the writer and illustrator of the cult comic book series Dogwitch.
Highland Film Group, which is co-financing White and handling world sales on the title at TIFF, has pre-sold multiple international territories, including to Splendid Film in Germany, IIF in Italy, Three Lines Pictures for Benelux, Cinemundo for Portugal, Falcon Films for the Middle East, Latin America to California Filmes and Rialto Distribution for Australia / New Zealand, among others.
White is being produced by Yariv Lerner, Dominic Burns, Crawford Anderson-Dillon and Sky Morfopoulos. Kate Beckinsale is executive producing together with Highland Film Group’s Arianne Fraser and Delphine Perrier, Patrick Wintersgill, Kevin Glynn, Pauric Duffy and Hannah Leader.
Highland Film Group’s current slate includes Nimród Antal’s sci-fi action thriller Bluefly with Russell Crowe and Priyanka Chopra Jonas; Neil Burger’s action thriller Barracuda starring Anthony Mackie and Dafne Keen; and Pierre Morel’s action thriller The Good Samaritan starring Daisy Ridley, Josh Duhamel and Sharlto Copley.
Woodcock is repped by Sarah Camlett at Independent Talent Group.
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