It may have taken the slow route of almost a decade, but Taylor Sheridan’s action thriller “F.A.S.T.” seems to finally be happening. After dumping it in the aughts, Warner Bros has now reacquired the film — no doubt due to Sheridan’s newfound popularity as the king of streaming over at Paramount.
In a deal involving high-level talks between Warner Bros. and Paramount, Sheridan has found his lead actor in Brendon Sklenar (1923), and that series’ main cinematographer Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
And how fast is F.A.S.T. moving? Warners has set an April 23, 2027 theatrical release date.
F.A.S.T. concerns a former special forces commando, down on his luck after he returns Stateside, who is tapped by the DEA to lead a black op strike team against CIA-protected drug dealers in his town.
Sheridan wrote the script in the mid-2010s, when he was an established scribe with movies such as “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water” under his belt. Warners then picked it up in 2018, with Sheridan initially signaling he wanted to direct and Chris Pratt circling to star. Gavin O’Connor later came on board as director in 2019, but by then, the studio was owned by AT&T, which didn’t see a financial upside of releasing a movie with the budget in the $70M range theatrically.
Warners thus put F.A.S.T. into turnaround, only to have Amazon snap it up as a streaming feature. However, it languished there too, with the rights eventually lapsing.
Now, a project that was once a Warners theatrical feature with a Marvel star then morphed into streaming feature, has been reacquired by David Zaslav’s Warners, and to show firm commitment, has even set up a 2027 release date.