Sons of Anarchy star Kristen Renton will play a New York City police detective in Uwe Boll’s new movie. The controversial German filmmaker retired from movies in 2016, only to return to the industry in 2021. The new project with Renton is called First Shift, and Boll said he will consider this project his true return to filmmaking.
Renton will star as an Antlanta-raised officer who works with a jaded Brooklyn officer played by Gino Anthony Pesi (Shades of Blue), reports Variety. Their first day working together is not easy, as they deal with personal tragedy and a mob killing. Boll told Variety that both actors were “very involved in their character development.”
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The movie will start filming in New York City next month and is produced by Boll’s Event Film. Although his regular director of photography, Mathias Neumann, is returning, he teamed up with mostly an American crew for the project. Michael Roesch is executive producing, with Ethan Maniquis (Machete) as editor and Ari Taub as line producer.
The ambitious Boll told Variety he has several other projects in the works, including one he thinks Kevin Costner would be interested in. He wants to make a movie about Eliot Ness, the real-life federal agent Costner played in The Untouchables, set during the last years of Ness’ career. Boll said he contacted Costner’s reps about the idea, but they said he was too busy with Yellowstone. “I think it would be a hit. I love The Untouchables. It would be great,” Boll said.
Boll also wants to make 12 Hours, a thriller about a man blackmailed into killing five people after his family is kidnapped. He is also developing Where Wolves Walk, a limited series he describes as “Seven meets Mare of Easttown.” He called First Shift his first “real movie” since returning to filmmaking, although he did recently film Hanau, a direct-to-video German movie about the 2020 terror attack in the titular German town.
Boll, 57, began his career in the early 1990s and has been a controversial figure in the film world for his entire career. In the early 2000s, he became famous for directing a string of poorly-received box office bombs loosely based on video games, some of which are considered the worst movies ever made. He also became antagonistic towards Hollywood filmmakers like Michael Bay and Eli Roth while promoting his 2008 movie Postal. In 2016, he retired from filmmaking and became a restauranteur in Canada. Now he’s back, hoping that his movies can be more successful as streamers search for new content.
Renton is known for her work on FX’s Sons of Anarchy. She starred in 12 episodes between the second and sixth seasons. Her other credits include the movies Into the Devil’s Reach, The Crickets Dance, American Zombieland, Marriage Killer, and Nation’s Fire. She also starred in two episodes of Charlie Sheen’s Anger Management.
