EXCLUSIVE: After wrapping on Vegas: A Love Story, a romantic thriller we scooped starring Maika Monroe and Brandon Sklenar, Ramin Bahrani is staying in the thriller genre with The Rancher, a Netflix film based on a spec by Melanie Toast, which he will rewrite and direct, with Toby Jaffe producing for RDV Films.
Bahrani will turn to this project after getting behind the camera on Last Meals, a previously announced death row chef drama starring Mads Mikkelsen and Boyd Holbrook.
Formerly known as Devil’s Rope, The Rancher is a female-led thriller set in rural Texas whose logline is being kept under wraps. Toast and Jaffe reunited on the project following their work together on the upcoming Cliffhanger reboot helmed by Carry-On‘s Jaume Collet-Serra. We were first to report on the spec sale last May.
The Oscar-nominated Iranian-American filmmaker behind titles like The White Tiger, 99 Homes and Chop Shop, Bahrani entered production on Vegas: A Love Story near the top of this year. Described as his most commercial film to date, pic also stars Paul Dano, Michael Shannon and Judy Greer and is produced by A/Vantage Pictures, Sugar Rush Pictures, and Noruz Films, with lead financing from Juniper Productions. Bahrani is repped by WME, Untitled Entertainment, Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole, and Ziffren Brittenham.
Other upcoming projects for Jaffe’s RDV Films include Netflix’s 6 Minutes to Freedom, an adaptation of the non-fiction book about the 1989 Delta Force rescue of an American hostage in Panama, and New Regency’s Panic Officer, an espionage thriller based on a spec by Ben Ripley, whose sale we scooped.
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