Joel Kinnaman to Star in Creature Feature ‘The Cell’

Joel Kinnaman (pictured above in Silent Night) won’t stay silent this time.

THR reports that the actor is set to star in the creature feature The Cell (not to be confused with the Jennifer Lopez movie).

Via the outlet, “Kinnaman plays Ryan Weaver, an investigative journalist preparing to expose a powerful pharmaceutical company when he wakes up imprisoned inside a secret medical testing facility. Told he is dangerously ill, Ryan discovers that patients are being isolated, drugged, and subjected to disturbing experiments — and that his captors appear more interested in studying him than curing him. As his body begins to mutate, Ryan searches for an escape. But what he discovers in the facility’s lower levels suggests its operators are creating something far worse than the disease they claim to be treating.”

Adam Cooper (Sleeping Dogs) will direct from a script by Evan Turner (Dear David) and Ben Zazove (Sherlock Gnomes).

While I can’t say the talent behind the project has me amped, the premise has a ton of promise. It has the sound of what Zach Cregger just did with Resident Evil, with a guy facing a terrible transformation forced by a shady pharmaceutical company. The Umbrella Corp. vibes are strong with this one.

I also enjoy Kinnaman’s work. He was great as Rick Flag in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad. And though the RoboCop remake in which he played the title character didn’t work out well, that wasn’t his fault.