EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has acquired Ballast, an action-thriller spec from Relay‘s Justin Piasecki, with Basil Iwanyk and Erica Lee’s Thunder Road aboard to produce, and the company’s Charlie Morrison set to exec produce.
In Ballast, which originally appeared on the 2021 Black List, a shipping engineer and her crew find themselves trapped in a deadly game in the middle of the Atlantic when they learn a series of car bombs are hidden amongst the thousands of vehicles on board.
Piasecki inked the deal after seeing Relay make its way to Netflix over the holidays. Thunder Road also produced that critically acclaimed conspiracy thriller, which premiered at the 2024 Toronto Film Festival and was released by Bleecker Street last summer.
A refreshingly original thriller directed by David Mackenzie, the Piasecki-penned Relay follows a mysterious fixer (Riz Ahmed) who assists whistleblowers in circumventing those who wish to silence them. Cleverly adopting an anonymous relay system, designed for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, as his means of communication, in an effort to protect his anonymity, he reluctantly surrenders his means of self-protection to help a biotech scientist (Lily James) expose her company’s deadly cover-up — only to discover her motives may not be what they seem. The film also stars Sam Worthington and Willa Fitzgerald.
Piasecki is well regarded in town for numerous original screenplays including the Black List-topping Stakehorse — which was bought in a bidding war by Amazon, with Justin Lin atached to direct — as well as the Nicholl Fellowship-winning Last Meal, to be directed by Ramin Bahrani in his next outing following our recently reported Vegas: A Love Story, with Mads Mikkelsen and Boyd Holbrook set to star. In television, he currently has WitSec in development at HBO with Chernin producing.
As for John Wick outfit Thunder Road, we recently broke the news of Mister, an action-comedy starring Walton Goggins and Chloë Grace Moretz that they’ll shoot in Madrid next month. Other projects on their upcoming slate include Marc Webb’s Lionsgate thriller Day Drinker starring Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz, Elegance Bratton’s crime thriller By Any Means starring Yahya Adul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg, Wind River: Rising, and the Michelle Yeoh actioner The Surgeon, to name just a few.
Piasecki is repped by Paradigm, Range Media Partners, and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.
