War has officially been declared between duelling action thrillers about a terrorist takeover of the White House.
FilmDistrict has scored the domestic distribution rights to Antoine Fuqua’s “Olympus Has Fallen” and has set an April 5th 2013 release date.
That puts it nearly three months ahead of Roland Emmerich’s “White House Down” which is currently slated for a June 28th 2013 release.
On the surface this is essentially the same scenario as earlier this year with rival “Snow White” projects “Mirror Mirror” and “Snow White and the Huntsman”. However, those films were aimed at entirely different audiences and featured completely differing approaches.
While no publicity materials from either film has really hit yet (‘Olympus’ does have a film market poster), both sound remarkably similar with the action focused on a Secret Service agent trying to stop a hostile force invading the U.S. President’s residence. In fact, ‘Olympus’ was at one time titled “White House Taken”.
‘Olympus’ boasts Gerard Butler as the agent and Aaron Eckhart as the President. Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster, Cole Hauser, Ashley Judd, Melissa Leo, Dylan McDermott, Radha Mitchell and Rick Yune also star.
‘Down’ stars Channing Tatum as the agent and Jamie Foxx as the President. Garcelle Beauvais, Lance Reddick, Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Woods, Richard Jenkins and Joey King also star.
Source: Screen Daily
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