Liam Neeson to be taken on a non-stop commute through the Congo for his next thriller

There aren’t many groups of people left that Liam Neeson hasn’t kicked the shit out of onscreen. Human traffickers, terrorists, rogue intelligence operatives, mobsters, wolves, serial killers, Batman, uh…commuters…you get the idea. And now, Neeson is primed to beat the hell out of his most daunting foe yet: The news.

Or something like that. Deadline reports the human equivalent of a stiff slug of whiskey is set to star in Charlie Johnson In The Flames, an adaptation of the Michael Ignatieff novel of the same name. Neeson will play the titular role, a “peerless BBC war correspondent covering civil unrest in the Congo.” Along with being the Meryl Streep of BBC war correspondents, his journalist confronts the murder of an innocent woman and becomes determined to reveal the truth, only to face a “network of murder, corruption, and violence that forces him to question his humanity.” Nothing says “fun night out at the movies” like a man questioning his very humanity.

The film will be directed by Tarik Saleh, the Swedish director of arty animated film Metropia and a forthcoming episode of Westworld. It will be written by Revolutionary Road and Red Sparrow screenwriter Justin Haythe, who probably puts his writer’s credit for The Lone Ranger somewhat farther down the page on his resume. No release date yet, though perhaps that’s simply because Neeson has yet to get around to beating the stuffing out of the studio’s scheduler.