The Call Up heads to production

Principal photography is due to get underway on November 10 in Birmingham, UK, on Charles Barker’s action-sci-fi The Call Up.

Max Deacon (Into the Storm, Hatfields & McCoys) takes the lead role and is joined by a cast of up-and-comers including Morfydd Clark (Madame Bovary), Ali Cook (The Anomaly), Parker Sawyers (Monsters: Dark Continent), Tom Benedict Knight (Dracula Untold), Boris Ler (In the Land of Blood and Honey), and newcomers Douggie McMeekin and Adriana Randall.

The Call Up follows a group of online gamers who are invited to trial a state-of-the-art virtual reality game, but what starts out like a dream encounter with cutting edge video technology – a perfect representation of soldiers in a warzone – takes a turn for the sinister when the stakes are raised to fatal.

Directed by Charles Barker from his own Brit List screenplay, the film is produced by Matthew James Wilkinson (Stigma Films), John Giwa-Amu (Red&Black Films) with Alan Martin (The Machine) to exec produce.

Other executive producers include Creative England’s Richard Holmes (Eden Lake) and Marzipan Productions, while Isabelle Georgeaux (Resistance) of Pont Neuf Productions acts as co-producer.

The film has also been part-funded through Creative England’s West Midlands Production Fund.

The film will be released by eOne in Germany, France and Scandinavia. Altitude Film Sales are handling international sales.