Get ready to hit the open road with Idris Elba. The Hijack star will play a long-haul trucker with a dangerous cargo in the new action film Hammer Down. The Hollywood Reporter has the news that Black Bear is shopping the film at the upcoming American Film Market.

Elba will star as Mac, a long-haul trucker with a policy of never asking what he’s being asked to transport, a la Jason Statham‘s Frank Martin. He’s the best in the business, and this time he’s taking his high-spirited teenage daughter along for the ride to show her the ropes. This time, however, he finds himself on the run from cops and criminals alike, all desperate to get their hands on his mysterious cargo. He’ll have to put the hammer down (trucker slang for hitting the accelerator) as he desperately tries to keep his cargo out of the wrong hands – and his daughter alive. Hammer Down will be directed by veteran producer and frequent James Gunn collaborator Simon Hatt, making his feature directorial debut; he previously worked with Elba on The Suicide Squad. The film is an expansion of Hatt‘s 2020 short film of the same name, which starred Chris Sullivan (This Is Us) and Abigail Dylan Harrison (The Affair).

What Other Trucker Action Movies Are There?

For a time in the 1970s, America was obsessed with trucker culture, and especially the citizens band radio truckers used to communicate with each other. That fad was reflected in the films of the time, including Jan-Michael Vincent‘s White Line Fever, Norman Jewison‘s F.I.S.T., and Every Which Way But Loose, which partnered Clint Eastwood with an orangutan. The most successful film in the genre was Smokey and the Bandit, which starred Burt Reynolds as a “blocker” who distracts cops from his trucker partner; its success ensured it was followed by multiple sequels. The genre began to die out with 1978’s Convoy, based on C.W. McCall‘s novelty song of the same name; it starred Kris Kristofferson and was director Sam Peckinpah‘s last film. Later entries in the genre include Over the Top, which starred Sylvester Stallone as a trucker who was also an arm-wrestling champion, and Big Trouble in Little China, which featured Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, driver of the “Pork Chop Express”.

Hammer Down will be produced by Charles Roven via Atlas Entertainment along with Madison Weireter; Elba is also producing with Gina Carter via 22 Summers.

Hammer Down will be shopped at the upcoming American Film Market; no release date has yet been announced.

via Collider