Misha Barton, Danny Trejo, Michael Madsen and Daniel Baldwin are attached to star in sex-trafficking thriller “Hope Lost,” which will start shooting in Rome this month, directed by young Italo helmer David Petrucci and produced by expanding Rome studio AMBI Pictures.
“Hope Lost” revolves around Sofia (Mischa Barton), a young Romanian ensnared into prostitution in Italy and subsequently sold by her pimp Manol (Michael Madsen) to the brute Ettore (Danny Trejo) who intends to torture her and another young woman in a snuff movie. Petrucci is a promising Italo genre helmer whose low-budget serial killer thriller “Canepazzo” (“Crazy Dog”), starring Franco Nero, was distributed by Eagle Pictures in Italy.
Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi are producing the English-language thriller through their AMBI Pictures banner, launched in Rome last year. Last month the ambitious AMBI also formed its own Beverly Hills-based international sales unit.
Also in Iervolino and Bacardi’s pipeline are Barry Levinson-directed drama “The Humbling,” starring Al Pacino and based on the novel by Philip Roth. AMBI is a co-producer on that pic, alongside Pacino, Jason Sosnoff and Ged Dickersin. Millennium Films has worldwide right to “Humbling.”
AMBI recently completed post-atomic actioner “Sights of Death,” starring Danny Glover, Daryl Hannah, Rutger Hauer, Stephen Baldwin and Michael Madsen, helmed by Italy’s Alessandro Capone.
