EXCLUSIVE: In a hot package to perk up a slumbering marketplace, Black Panther‘s Winston Duke is set to star in Nine Days with Deadpool 2‘s Zazie Beetz, It‘s Bill Skarsgård, Doctor Strange‘s Benedict Wong and David Rysdahl. The film is written and will be directed this summer by Edson Oda, the celebrated commercials director who is making his feature debut behind the camera.

Here’s the logline: In a house, distant from the reality we know, a reclusive man (Duke) interviews prospective candidates, a personification of human souls (Beetz, Skarsgård, Wong & Rysdahl) – for the privilege that he once had. To be born. 30WEST helped secure financing and will rep worldwide distribution rights with CAA Media Finance.

Oda Courtesy photo

Oda is a 2017 Sundance Screenwriters Lab Fellow and Nine Days was developed through the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program Labs.

Pic is a co-production between Juniper Productions, Mandalay Pictures, Nowhere, and MACRO, in association with The Space Program, Mansa Productions, Oak Street Pictures, 30WEST, and Datari Turner Productions

The producers are Mandalay’s Jason Michael Berman, Nowhere’s Mette-Marie Kongsved and Laura Tunstall, Juniper’s Matthew Lindner and Datari Turner of Datari Turner Productions. Exec producing are MACRO’s Charles D. King and Kim Roth, The Space Program’s Gus Deardoff, Mansa Productions’ Kellon Akeem and Dwight Howard, Oak Street’s Renée Frigo and Beth Hubbard, 30WEST’s Trevor Groth, Winston Duke, Mandalay’s Will Raynor, Nowhere’s Michelle Craig and Piero Frescobaldi, and Caroline Connor, Mark G. Mathis, Mark Stevens and Larry Weinberg. Co-producing is MACRO’s Yira Vilaro, Mandalay’s Patrick Raymond, and Nowhere’s David Horwitch. There will be some lengthy thank you speeches if Nine Days succeeds during awards season.

James Shaw/Shutterstock

Oda is a Brazil-born USC grad whose ad campaigns have won the Golden Lion and three Bronze Lions in the Cannes International Creativity Festival and who notably directed the sci-fi short film Malaria. He said he was “thrilled to be working with such an incredible cast and amazing team. So grateful for all the support I have received. Nine Days is a very personal story to me, and I can’t imagine a better team to help me tell it.”

Rysdahl ICM Partners

Said Berman, Kongsved and Tunstall: “This is one of the most beautiful and complex human stories we’ve been fortunate enough to be a part of, so eloquently spanning across cultures and vantage points, yet set in a world that we’ve never experienced before. Being able to partake in creating something so wholly original, and facilitating the realization of Edson’s singular vision with the help of this outrageously talented cast and crew, is truly exciting”

Oda’s repped by CAA, Gotham Group and Jackoway Austen Tyerman; Duke is CAA, and Hansen, Jacobson; Beetz is Gersh, Grandview and Sloane Offer; Skarsgård is WME, Magnolia, Hirsch Wallerstein, Wong is Anonymous Content and Hirsch Wallerstein; and Rysdahl is ICM and Grandview.