Actor Jamie Bell has been cast in the lead role in the upcoming feature Dynamite Room. Deadline has word that Bell will play a soldier who arrives heralding a German invasion in the tense WWII thriller.
Dynamite Room is set in July 1940, and opens with 12-year-old evacuee Lydia walking through a village in rural England on a hot summer day while wearing a gas mask. As she strolls through a deserted town, she arrives at the house she grew up in to find her family gone. Late that night, a soldier arrives, played by Bell, who knows her name. As he begins a kind of cat-and-mouse game, Lydia has to figure out if he’s telling the truth — and why he looks so familiar to her.
The film is based on Jason Hewitt‘s novel of the same name, with E.V. Crowe penning the script and Olly Blackburn (Donkey Punch) directing. Producing the film are Ivana MacKinnon of Stray Bear Productions and Oliver Roskill of Record Player Films.
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“I am excited to be working with Jamie Bell, a world-class actor with immense screen presence and the chops and intensity to take this character into the darkness with him. Although events played out 80 years ago, E.V. Crowe has given us an urgent and contemporary story, deeply relevant in this era of division,” Blackburn said.
At this point, no production schedule has been set.
Bell can next be seen in A24’s Skin, which follows a man raised by racist skinheads who risks his life to leave a white supremacy group in order to become a better person. The drama will have its U.S. theatrical release on July 26 following a VOD run on DirecTV on June 27. He’ll also co-star as Elton John’s lyricist Bernie Taupin in the upcoming biopic Rocketman.
