Rita Ora, Marshawn Lynch & Jack O’Connell Join ‘He Bled Neon’, An Early Cannes Market Buzz Project

Andreas Wiseman
·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Singer and actress Rita Ora, former NFL star Marshawn Lynch and Rogue Heroes star Jack O’Connell are set to join Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders) in action-thriller He Bled Neon, which is an early Cannes market buzz title.

This is the project we revealed last week from music video director Drew Kirsch, who came to prominence co-helming Taylor Swift music videos for “You Need to Calm Down” and “Lover,” and also helmed videos for Shakira, Charlie Puth, John Legend, Imagine Dragons and Machine Gun Kelly.

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Grammy nominee Zhu will compose the score in collaboration with Joseph Trapanese (The Greatest Showman, Straight Outta Compton).

The film’s official synopsis reads: “After his estranged brother’s mysterious death, Ethan’s (Cole) journey to Las Vegas for the funeral unravels a dark web of crime, forcing him to confront his past as he delves into the city’s gritty underworld to uncover the truth, risking everything he holds dear in the process.”

XYZ Films (BlackBerry) will produce alongside frequent collaborator Two & Two Pictures (Under the Shadow). The companies are in post on Hallow Road, directed by Babak Anvari and co-starring Rosamund Pike and Matthew Rhys.

XYZ will be handling world sales on He Bled Neon for next month’s Cannes market, with WME Independent co-repping domestic. Pic is written by Tim Cairo and Jake Gibson (Lowlife) from an original story by XYZ co-founder Nate Bolotin, who was inspired by his early experiences growing up in Las Vegas.

Ora, who has a record number of UK top 10 singles for a British female solo artist, is currently a panelist on The Masked Singer and is also known for film roles in Fifty Shades of Grey, Twist and Pokémon Detective Pikachu. She will soon star in Descendants 4: The Rise of Red on Disney+.

Lynch is the former All-Pro NFL running back and Super Bowl champion for the Seattle Seahawks. Since retirement he has acted in a handful of projects, most recently Bottoms, with appearances in the series No Script, Westworld and Murderville.

Rogue Heroes and Unbroken star O’Connell has recently starred in Ferrari and Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black and is currently in production on the Ryan Coogler thriller for Warner Bros.

Ora is repped by CAA and Untitled Entertainment. Kirsch, Cairo and Gibson are repped by XYZ Films and Ginsberg Daniels Kallis. Lynch is repped by WME and Ziffren Brittenham. O’Connell is repped by Conway van Gelder Grant in the UK, UTA in the U.S. and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern LLP.

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