Stephen Lang, Uli Edel Reunite on ‘Mercy Rider’ 30 Years After ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ (Exclusive)

Avatar star Stephen Lang is reuniting with director Uli Edel 37 years after Lang’s breakthrough performance in Edel’s Last Exit to Brooklyn.

Lang, who plays Colonel Miles Quaritch in James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, has signed on to star in The Mercy Rider, a modern-day Western thriller which Edel will direct from a script by Richard Julian.

Lang plays Joe McCabe, a former soldier and reclusive Texas rancher who decides to risk everything to fight back against immigration authorities after they detain a hardworking local father. Determined to reunite the farmer with his family, McCabe comes up against a hard-line immigration agent, Harvey “Hawk” Walters, played by Irish actor Jack Hudson. The film is set to shoot in Mexico.

G. Mac Brown, a line producer on Last Exit, and an executive producer on Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning The Departed, and Neil Burger’s 2017 hit The Upside, will produce The Mercy Rider with Hudson.

German-born Edel made his feature debut with the sleeper hit Christiane F. (1981), the story of a young Berlin heroin addict. Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989) was his English-language debut. The adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel, set in the working-class underbelly of Red Hook on the Brooklyn waterfront, circa 1952, starred Lang as a shop steward who is a closeted homosexual, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a prostitute secretly searching for love. While just a modest commercial success, Last Exit proved a breakout film for all involved. Edel would go on to direct the Oscar-nominated The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008).

Lang is represented by Innovative Artists. Hudson is represented by International Artists Management and Framework Entertainment. Edel is represented by Gersh.