Renny Harlin has returned to Malta. The veteran filmmaker touched down on the island last week to attend the Mediterrane Film Festival, which screened his latest film, the shark thriller Deep Water, starring Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley. But it was his 1995 action flick Cutthroat Island that originally brought the Finnish auteur to Malta, host of many blockbuster Hollywood productions, including the Gladiator and Jurassic Park franchises.
And he was stoked to be back. “Malta is the best-kept secret,” Harlin told Collider’s Steven Weintraub during a masterclass conversation on directing held inside the festival hub in Valletta last week. “People don’t realize how incredible this place is.”
The duo covered Harlin’s career from start to finish, ending their chat with a look ahead at Harlin’s next release, The Beast, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Joel Kinnaman, due for release in October. Penned by Umair Aleem, the film casts Jackson as a U.S. president who becomes trapped inside his heavily armored presidential limousine, aka ”the Beast,” during a coordinated coup by a hostile militia. To survive, the president must uncover the vehicle’s top-secret offensive capabilities and fight his way back to safety and his country.
