Motor City will be a unique experience as an action film with very limited dialogue. Our Chris Bumbray had a blast with the film at TIFF, saying in his review, “The action is ferocious, with an especially good mano-a-mano fight between Ritchson and co-star Pablo Schreiber (who plays a crooked cop) serving as the action highlight. […] While the idea of a dialogue-free action movie might not be everyone’s cup of tea, I found myself riveted by the craft demonstrated by Ponciroli. Given Ritchson’s rising fame, this could be a movie people talk about for years.”
Deadline is now reporting that the Alan Ritchson-starring action film has secured distribution with RLJE Films, the genre label within the IFC Entertainment Group. The studio has secured the U.S. rights to Motor City for around $3-4 million. It’s being said that the indie film, which sports a price tag of around $30 million will be the biggest movie that the company has released. There isn’t a particular release date scheduled as of yet, but RLJE is committed to releasing the film sometime in 2026.
Motor City is coming our way from Potsy Ponciroli, who previously wrote and directed Old Henry, directed and co-wrote the comedy Super Zeroes, directed the crime comedy Greedy People, and created the CMT series Still the King… Although, at the moment he might be best known for being the person who was hired to write the long-awaited Goonies sequel.
For this movie, Ponciroli was working from a screenplay that was written by Chad St John and was featured on the Black List. Deadline notes that the “script started out at Warner Bros more than a decade ago and went through multiple iterations in terms of leads and directors interested. Despite becoming an independent project it has managed to maintain impressive production scale and scope. It’s part graphic novel-part noir-part John Wick meets disco.” Motor City was made on a budget of $30 million.
Ritchson and Woodley are joined in the cast by Ben Foster and Pablo Schreiber. Ritchson plays John Miller, a Detroit man released from prison, who unleashes a rampage of brutal vengeance on those who framed him. The Detroit-set film is characterized by immersive visual storytelling, with stunningly choreographed and stylized action sequences.
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed