Ashley Benson

Source: Yale Entertainment

Ashley Benson

Los Angeles-based Great Escape has kicked off sales talks in Toronto on heist thriller Stranglehold starring Ashley Benson from Spring Breakers and Jake Lacy from The White Lotus alongside Justin Long, and Ron Perlman.

Clark Duke directs the feature, which shot this summer and is in the vein of Dog Day Afternoon, Die Hard and the Coen Brothers oeuvre.

Benson stars as a stripper with aspirations of becoming a professional dancer who ekes out a living with her husband (Lacy). They decide to pull off a Christmas party heist at the strip club where she works, unaware that a group of gangsters from out of town are also in attendance.

Filming took place over the summer and the project is in post-production.

Duke co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Chandler Duke and Billington Garrett. Jordan Yale Levine, Jordan Beckerman, and Michael Day of Yale Productions serve as producers.

“Stranglehold is a continuation of many themes I explored in [feature directorial debut] Arkansas,” said Duke. “Very much a movie about where we are right now.”

Great Escape president Nick Donnermeyer added: “I actually went to college with Clark so this is something of a full circle moment to be working with him and his team. This film is such a wild ride and not really like anything else out there.”

Benson also starred in Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars, and was most recently seen opposite Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Jenna Coleman in Prime Video miniseries Wilderness.

Lacy recently appeared in Peacock limited series Apples Never Fall and starred in Paramount Players’ Significant Other.

Long’s credits include Barbarian opposite Bill Skarsgård and Georgina Campbell, Tusk, and the Disney+ series Goosebumps.

Perlman starred in the Hellboy films, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and BBC series The Capture. He was most recently seen alongside Matt Damon and Casey Affleck in Doug Liman’s heist pic The Instigators for Apple.

Great Escape’s TIFF sales slate includes the action film Midnight starring Milla Jovovich, Rosario Dawson and Alexandra Shipp; Alicia Silverstone and Karl Glusman erotic thriller Pretty Thing; spy feature Fog Of War with John Cusack and Brianna Hildebrand; and Electra with Maria Bakalova, Jack Farthing, and Abigail Cowen.

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