Adrien Brody and Sean Penn to Star in Doug Liman’s ‘Snake Island,’ About the Nord Stream Sabotage — Now Filming

A huge update in regard to “Snake Island,” directed by Doug Liman, which I was the only outlet to report on a month ago. Not only is it currently filming in Croatia, until late September, but according to reports, two recent Oscar winners have now boarded the project as its leads.

Adrien Brody (“The Brutalist”) and Sean Penn (“One Battle After Another”) will now star in “Snake Island,” which tackles a mysterious and heavily contested incident in the Russia–Ukraine conflict: the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea.

Liman’s film follows a covert team of Ukrainian divers on a high-stakes underwater mission as geopolitical tensions escalate in the months leading up to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While the true identities of those responsible remain disputed and officially unresolved, the incident has become one of the defining mysteries of the war, with international investigations and global speculation running rampant.

The biggest recent development came when German prosecutors formally charged a former Ukrainian army officer over the September 2022 sabotage of the pipelines. According to intelligence reports, more than one person was involved in the sabotage, and based on the synopsis of Liman’s film, he will be tackling the “team” behind it.

This has turned into a major project, with currently no U.S. studio behind it, but you can bet we’ll be hearing more about this one in the coming weeks and months.

“Snake Island” will be Liman and Penn’s second feature together, following “Fair Game,” which was in competition at Cannes back in 2010. It’s also notable that “Fair Game” was a political thriller based on real events, making “Snake Island” something of a thematic reunion for the two. Might as well premiere this one at Cannes next year.

Liman, whose résumé includes action thrillers such as “The Bourne Identity,” “Edge of Tomorrow,” “Go,” and “American Made,” might be a good fit here, as he is known for blending action with grounded realism. Cinematographer Henry Braham, who lensed Liman’s last three films (“Road House,” “The Instigators,” and “Bitcoin”), is attached as DP on “Snake Island.”

Will Liman once again use AI-generated backgrounds to cheapen production costs on “Snake Island”? That’s a question worth asking. That’s what he did on “Bitcoin,” shot earlier this year and starring Casey Affleck, Gal Gadot, and Pete Davidson — which still has no distributor.