Maria Bakalova joins Nicolas Cage in The Brand
Alexander Ludwig and Gabriel Basso also join the true-crime film, adapted from David Grann’s reporting on the rise of prison gangs.
Good news from Hollywood.
Maria Bakalova is set to star alongside Oscar winner Nicolas Cage in the upcoming crime film The Brand. The project is based on an investigative article in The New Yorker by bestselling author and acclaimed journalist David Grann. His work has already inspired Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, James Gray's The Lost City of Z and David Lowery's The Old Man & the Gun. Alexander Ludwig, of the Bad Boys films, and Gabriel Basso, of The Night Agent, are also in the cast.
The Brand follows the rise of organised crime inside the American prison system.
Ludwig will play Taylor Hartman, a young man serving a life sentence who is taken under the wing of Carter Briggs (Cage), the feared leader of San Quentin's dominant prison gang. When the authorities try to break up the gang by transferring its members to prisons across the country, they inadvertently help its criminal empire spread beyond the prison walls. As Taylor rises through the ranks, he gains the means to build a future with Lilly (Bakalova), the woman he loves. But that future pulls him one way, and his loyalty to Carter another. As the violence escalates, Taylor must decide whether he has the courage to bring down the empire he helped build.
Pre-production is currently scheduled to begin in early 2027. Producer Anthony Mastromauro describes the project this way: “The Brand is an epic gangster story that charts the rise of prison gangs during the era of mass incarceration, alongside one man’s personal journey to hell and back. It’s an honour to bring another of David Grann’s compelling investigative stories to the screen, starting with Alessandro Camon’s fantastic screenplay and backed by the vision and passion of our director, Vincent Grashaw.
I couldn’t be more excited about this fantastic cast,
starting with Alexander Ludwig’s strength and vulnerability, Maria Bakalova’s brilliance, the presence of Gabriel Basso and one of the greatest actors of my generation, Nicolas Cage. We believe we have all the ingredients to make an enduring piece of classic cinema.”
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