Netflix has announced that Jessica Alba will be headlining Trigger Warning, an upcoming original film from the streaming giant.
Apart from starring in Trigger Warning as the lead, Jessica Alba will also executive produce the movie. Thunder Road’s Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee will take on producer duties.
Trigger Warning: Director, screenplay, plot
According to the official press release, the movie will be an action thriller directed by Mouly Surya, the Indonesian director whose drama film Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017.
Mouly will be working from a screenplay written by Josh Olson (A History of Violence) and John Brancato (Terminator Salvation).
With regards to the plot, Alba will play a traumatized version who inherits a bar previously owned by her recently deceased grandfather.
The story will follow Alba’s character as she wrestles with moral decisions after learning the actual circumstances behind the death of his grandfather.
Jessica Alba back in action
Over the years, Jessica Alba has produced memorable turns in genre films such as the Fantastic Four movies and the Sin City films.
But not many may realize that the actress broke through Hollywood in her early years via the action-thriller genre.
She was only 19 years old when she was cast in the title role of Max Guevara for Dark Angel, a sci-fi series created by legendary action film director James Cameron.
She would go on to star in the series for a couple of seasons, and in the process, earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series – Drama in 2001.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNAYxzhA6lw
More recently, she’s flexing her action film chops through L.A.’s Finest, a spin-off series based on Michael Bay’s Bad Boys films, and also stars Gabrielle Union. Alba also serves as an executive producer for the Spectrum show.
Netflix and action films
Netflix has delivered original action films before, with notable examples that include Triple Frontier (starring Ben Affleck), Bright (with Will Smith), and The Night Comes for Us (with The Raid’s Iko Uwais), just to name a few.
But none of them were as successful as the recent Extraction, the super-kinetic and hyper-violent thriller that starred Chris Hemsworth.
Of course, Netflix is now looking to replicate the success of Extraction, and the formula seems to be as follows: Get a popular star and then hire an up-and-coming action director to stage brutal fight scenes.
Mouly certainly has enough experience to deliver the goods. Not only was her Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts an effective drama, but it was also acclaimed for incorporating a feminist Western genre flavor to the proceedings.
With Trigger Warning, Mouly should be able to explore once again a story that has a complicated heroine (played by Jessica Alba) dealing with violent circumstances.
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