First it was London’s criminal underbelly, then it was a lion, now it’s a bunch of baddies on a plane. That’s right: Idris Elba has a new coterie of crooks to face off against in Apple TV+’s upcoming hijacking thriller, aptly titled Hijack, a seven-hour thriller set 35-thousand feet in the air, told in real time.
Announced back in April last year, Elba will portray Sam Nelson, “an accomplished negotiator in the business world,” forced by events in the sky to step up and use his rhetorical guile to save the lives of the passengers on board. Nelson’s high-risk methodology pushes events to the brink — but might just be the only way to get everyone back safely on terra firma.
Here’s everything else we know about Hijack.
What is Hijack about?
It’s a pretty simple premise, really: Idris Elba plays the negotiator Sam Nelson, who just so happens to be on a flight to London when it’s taken over by [insert terrorists/highly-sophisticated thieves/Gary Oldman here]. Given seven hours — the story is told in real-time, like 24 — Nelson must use his deft but risky tactics to bring the crisis to an end, without inadvertently killing everyone on board. No pressure, then.
It’s written by George Kay, best known for his Netflix collaborations Lupin and Criminal, the former a French thriller series which, at the time, was the most-watched non-English language series on the streamer. His last major project was the ITVX mini-series Litvinenko, the David Tennant-starring dramatisation of the poisoning of eponymous Russian ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko in the UK, and the subsequent fight for justice lead by his wife, Marina.
Who stars in Hijack?
There’s only a smattering of casting news so far, aside from Elba. In May last year, Variety reported that The Good Wife and Snowpiercer‘s Archie Panjabi had joined as Zahra Gahfoor, “a counter terrorism officer on the ground who becomes part of the investigation.”
Max Beesley, Mohamed Elsandel, Holly Aird, Aimée Kelly, Antonia Salib, Zora Bishop, Fatima Adoum, Ananya Chadha, Nebras Jamali, Lucia Aliu, Mei Henri and Chantelle Alle have all been attached to co-star, though less is known about their respective characters.
Does Hijack have a release date?
Nope, no release date for now. Production began in May last year, continuing until at least October. Don’t expect this one out at least until after Elba’s big screen Luther follow-up, subtitled The Fallen Sun, in late February.
