Remember late 2013 when Owen Wilson and Pierce Brosnan were in northern Thailand filming a movie about a fictional Southeast Asian nation where the military overthrows civilian rule to stage a coup? That time they torched the northern province of Lampang before joining the Bangkok Shutdown?
Well a trailer for the movie, originally called “The Coup,” just landed in anticipation of its release later this year, though it’s no longer called “The Coup.”
Meet “No Escape,” a movie about an American family who seek better lives as expats in Southeast Asia, only to find themselves caught in a violent power struggle between an oppressive state and insurgent forces.
“Ten years ago, I could not have pictured myself dragging myself to the other side of the world to start over,” Wilson’s dad character says in the trailer before cutting to images of threatening natives cutting heads off fish and shooting each other.
Things go bad though when their optimism turns to terror in a harrowing tale of white people caught in an internecine bloodbath. They must struggle to stay alive by banding together with other white people in a movie that would resemble a formula zombie flick, but with incomprehensibly angry Asians standing in for the zombies.
It begs the question: After filming the movie in Thailand, was the movie renamed because it proved prescient and might give offense for hewing to close to reality?
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the original name “tested poorly” because Americans “didn’t know what the heck a ‘coup’ was.”
Related:
Owen Wilson accused of supporting whistle-blowing protester
Owen Wilson, Pierce Brosnan safe after fire on ‘The Coup’ set
