David Harbour Takes on Dark Holiday Thriller Violent Night from Dead Snow Director Tommy Wirkola

Stranger Things star David Harbour will lead his own action franchise in Universal Pictures’ Violent Night, which stems from the mind of John Wick and Nobody director David Leitch and is now set for release in December 2022. The man behind the world of the hugely popular action franchise that is John Wick will be on producer duty, with Violent Night set to be directed by Tommy Wirkola, of horror comedy Dead Snow fame, working from a script written by Sonic the Hedgehog’s Pat Casey and Josh Miller.

Specific details surrounding the plot of Violent Night are being kept under wraps for now, but the movie has so far been described as a “coal-dark holiday thriller that says you should always bet on red.” What that means exactly is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard not to wonder if David Harbour will play an action-oriented version of Santa Claus…

David Leitch, who has become a serious player when it comes to the action movie genre thanks to his work on the likes of John Wick, Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and Fast and Furious spin-off Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, will producer Violent Night alongside Kelly McCormick. Leitch most recently gave Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk his chance at punching and kicking nameless bad guys in the brilliantly brutal Nobody, which hit screens earlier this year. He will next demonstrate his talents for action in Bullet Train, which stars a stellar ensemble cast including Brad Pitt, Joey King, Andrew Koji, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Zazie Beetz, Masi Oka, Michael Shannon, Logan Lerman, Hiroyuki Sanada, Karen Fukuhara, Bad Bunny and Sandra Bullock, and follows five assassins who find themselves on a Japanese bullet train, realizing that their individual assignments are all interconnected.

As for David Harbour, the actor has seen his star rise rapidly ever since starring in Netflix’s Stranger Things. Violent Night will not be Harbour’s first dalliance with the action movie genre, with the actor having led director Neil Marshall’s disappointing Hellboy reboot, battled Chris Hemsworth in the Netflix smash-hit Extraction, and most recently joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the super-soldier Alexei Shostakov AKA Red Guardian in Black Widow.

David Harbour will soon return to his most famous role as Jim Hopper in the upcoming fourth season of Stranger Things. While the majority of details are being kept under wraps, it has been revealed that Hopper survived the explosive finale of season 3, with the intrepid sheriff having been imprisoned far from home in the snowy wasteland of Kamchatka, Russia, where he will face dangers both human… and other. Meanwhile, back in the States, a new horror is beginning to surface, something long buried, something that connects everything.

Harbour has since revealed that the season will reveal details of Hopper’s backstory saying, “So there are these three things that we’ve established in the season that if we don’t pay off, it means that they’re bad writers. And the Duffer brothers are very good writers. So I know specifically that in Season 4 we will give you a big, huge reveal about Hopper’s backstory.”

There is currently no word yet on when production on Violent Night will begin, but with the movie currently set to hit theaters on December 2, 2022, one would expect it to be soon. This comes to us from The Hollywood Reporter.