Solstice Studios has acquired worldwide rights to the elevated action thriller The Plane starring Gerard Butler (Greenland, Angel Has Fallen) and is targeting a June 28, 2021 production start date. The film will be produced by Di Bonaventura Pictures’ Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian, MadRiver Pictures’ Marc Butan, and Butler and Alan Siegel under their G-BASE banner. This is the first of several projects to come between di Bonaventura and Solstice Studios, who will finance, distribute the film in the U.S. and handle international, including servicing the international distribution deals made by MadRiver International when the project was first announced at AFM 2019. 

Based on a story by Charles Cumming and Christian Gudegast, with a script by Charles Cumming, JP Davis and a recently revised draft by James Coyne, The Plane follows commercial airline pilot Ray Torrance (Butler) who heroically lands his storm-damaged aircraft on a remote jungle island in the Philippines, only to find himself stranded in a lawless war zone and the newfound target of ruthless pirates gunning to take the plane and its passengers hostage. As the world searches for the missing aircraft amidst a growing media frenzy, Ray must keep his passengers alive long enough to be found or to find a way out.

The deal was negotiated by Butan, di Bonaventura and Schuyler Moore of Greenberg Glusker with Solstice’s Mark Gill and Karen Barna.

Butler is currently in production on Cop Shop and is fresh off Ric Roman Waugh’s Greenland, which opened successfully abroad and will be released in the US next month. He previously starred in Angel Has Fallen, which was the final installment in the highly successful Olympus Has Fallen trilogy, which Solstice Studios CEO Mark Gill produced.