Idris Elba to battle a lion in new survival thriller

Idris Elba will star in a survival thriller in which he will be pitted against a lion.

The Thor actor has signed up to star in Beast, which will be directed by Baltasar Kormakur for Universal Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

While plot details are being kept under wraps, it is described as being tonally similar to The Shallows, the 2016 survival thriller starring Blake Lively as a surfer stalked by a shark. Beast, however, features a lion as the predatory antagonist.

Beast is based on an original idea by Jaime Primak-Sullivan and the script was written by Ryan Engle, who worked on the 2018 monster movie Rampage starring Dwayne Johnson.

Kormakur and Primak-Sullivan will produce the project alongside Will Packer and James Lopez for their Will Packer Productions banner.

Both Elba and Kormakur are no strangers to the survival thriller genre. The English actor starred alongside Kate Winslet in 2017 movie The Mountain Between Us, in which they portrayed the lone survivors of a plane crash who must find their way back to civilisation.

The Icelandic moviemaker previously directed the 2015's Everest, based on the real events of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, and 2018's Adrift, another true story about a couple - played by Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin - who find themselves adrift in the middle of the ocean after a hurricane.

Elba's upcoming projects include drama Concrete Cowboy, which recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and James Gunn’s DC movie The Suicide Squad, which is slated for release in 2021.