Filming Underway on Thriller BLAKE SEA Starring Jude Law

Two-time Academy Award nominee Jude Law captains the cast of BLACK SEA, the suspenseful adventure thriller being directed by Academy Award winner Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September) and produced by Charles Steel for Cowboy Films. Black Sea, which will be released in 2014, is co-produced and co-financed by Focus and Film4. Focus CEO James Schamus and Focus co-CEO Andrew Karpen made the announcement today.

Focus holds worldwide rights - excluding U.K. free-TV rights, which are held by Film4 - to the movie. Focus executive vice president, international production Teresa Moneo is supervising Black Sea for president of production Jeb Brody. Filming has commenced in the U.K.

Black Sea is being produced by Mr. Macdonald alongside Mr. Steel, who reteam following Mr. Macdonald's latest film as director, How I Live Now, starring Saoirse Ronan and George MacKay, which will be released this fall. Cowboy Films also produced Mr. Macdonald's The Last King of Scotland, for which they shared a BAFTA Award and for which Forest Whitaker won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Film4 has made four previous movies with Mr. Macdonald, including Touching the Void, The Last King of Scotland, and the Roman epic adventure The Eagle, also with Focus. Dennis Kelly, creator of the cult television seriesUtopia, wrote the original screenplay for Black Sea.

Black Sea centers on a rogue submarine captain (Mr. Law) who, after being laid off from a salvage company, pulls together a misfit crew to go after a sunken treasure rumored to be lost in the depths of the Black Sea. As greed and desperation take control onboard their claustrophobic vessel, the increasing uncertainty of the mission causes the men to turn on each other to fight for their own survival.

Joining Mr. Law in the cast are Grigoriy Dobrygin (of How I Ended This Summer), Konstantin Khabenskiy (Focus' Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), Sergey Kolesnikov (A Good Day to Die Hard), Scoot McNairy (Argo), Ben Mendelsohn (Focus' The Place Beyond the Pines), Sergey Puskepalis (also of How I Ended This Summer), British Independent Film Award winner Michael Smiley (Kill List), David Threlfall (Nowhere Boy), and Jodie Whittaker (Film4's Venus).
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Director of photography Christopher Ross (Eden Lake) joins the crew along with production designer Nick Palmer (Red Tails), costume designer Natalie Ward (Focus' The Debt), and editor Justine Wright (Film4's The Iron Lady).

Mr. Schamus and Mr. Karpen commented, "With Jude Law and a terrific galley of actors, audiences will be riveted by the machinations of this crew in Dennis Kelly's suspenseful script."

Tessa Ross, Head of Film4, said, "All of us at Film4 love working with Kevin, and have done so on many of his wonderful films over the last ten years, since his extraordinary feature Touching the Void. We're all very excited to be embarking on this visceral, underwater thriller with him and with Charles Steel, and all our friends at Focus."

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos

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