No, you are not dreaming. There is a real movie coming to Netflix that stars Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, and Pedro Pascal. Somehow the casting gods brought all these men together on screen in the form of Triple Frontier, which was shown in select theaters for a week before it hit Netflix on March 13. The elaborate heist that is at the center of Triple Frontier is not based on a true story. But, the years it took to bring the script to life and train the actors required just as much, if not more, patience and planning than the characters in the movie needed to get away with their crime. Of course, with a casting lineup that epic, the plot has to match. Triple Frontier, an action thriller, involves a group of Special Forces veterans who decide to rob a South American drug lord and equally split the profits to eliminate their financial woes.
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The film is directed by J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year) who also co-wrote the screenplay with Mark Boal (Zero Dark Thirty). But, the film wasn’t originally in Chandor’s hands. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Boal originally wrote the script for Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow to direct in 2010. (She is now credited as an executive producer.) Various actors were also expected to star in Triple Frontier over the nine-year development process. During those years, the list of stars attached to the film included Tom Hanks, Johnny Depp, Tom Hardy, Channing Tatum, and more. But, they eventually dropped out of the project, pushing back the release date. Chandor told People that Triple Frontier was further delayed when Affleck, who has publicly spoken about his battle with alcoholism, had to take time to address his health issues.
When the cast was finalized and everyone made it to set, the stars then had to going through a training process to ensure they were believable as special operatives. Affleck and Hunnam spoke about the training during an interview on The Today Show. Affleck said practicing helped him connect more with the role. “[I wanted] to make it feel as though you were really seeing genuine special operators working and get an entree into that world,” he said. “Charlie and I and the rest of the guys did a bunch of work training with them and we tried our best.”
Hunnam added that the actors worked with real weapons. “[The] way we started this, as Ben just mentioned, was four days on a firing range doing live fire with these three SEAL Team operatives and a Delta Force operative. So, that was a really wonderful way to get to know each other and get to trust each other,” Hunnam explained.
Thankfully, the years of casting and director shake-ups, as well as the practicing, paid off because we will finally get to see this group of action stars appear in a movie together. Plus, you will get to witness some more of the fighting moves Hunnam and Hedlund tried out in those unforgettable beach wrestling pictures. What more could you ask for?