Vince Vaughn teams up with director of Bone Tomahawk for a “brutal” action thriller

Vince Vaughn spends most of his time these days smirking his way through problems, defusing tense domestic situations with a quip and an “Ain’t I a rascal?” grin. That might not be enough to overcome the ordeals he’ll face in his next movie, though, which sounds like it’s going to be less Wedding Crashers, and more Human Body Annihilators. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Vaughn is teaming up with Bone Tomahawk director S. Craig Zahler for a prison-based follow-up to his brutal, cannibalistic indie hit.

The film in question: Brawl In Cell Block 99, where Vaughn will play a down-on-his-luck boxer (a classic Vaughn-type character), who ends up working as a drug courier (less so), who’s then forced to kill a bunch of people to survive in prison (0 percent Vaughnness-achieved). Not that the actor hasn’t gone dark before: Between a career criminal turn in True Detective season 2 and his upcoming crime thriller Term Life, he’s proved his recent aptitude at pretending to glower and fire guns. That doesn’t mean it’s still not a little weird to hear that Fred Claus is gearing up to go full-on Liam Neeson, though, and appear in a movie where he’ll probably have to beat a dude to death with a dumbbell he smuggled back from the yard.