Miles Teller has signed on to star in Copperhead, a new thriller from John Swab and Black Label Media, giving the project a lead and a production timetable at the same time. Production is set to kick off in August.
The deal puts Teller at the center of a film built around an undercover drug deal that erupts into violence in West Texas, with a veteran detective forced to team with a young federal agent to break open a conspiracy inside an elite task force. Swab wrote and directed King Ivory, and Black Label Media has backed films including Die My Love, Sicario, I Wanna Dance with Somebody and Only the Brave.
For Teller, Copperhead lands in a run that already includes Michael, where he played John Branca, and Paper Tiger, which he will next be seen in after its Cannes premiere and upcoming Neon release. That sequence matters because it shows Copperhead is not a wait-and-see title for him; it is the next step in a packed stretch of film work.
Black Label Media is financing and producing Copperhead alongside Teller's Lime Tree Productions and Swab's Milk Boy, but the role Teller will play has not been disclosed. That leaves the central question inside the project itself still open, even as the film has moved from setup to a real start date in August.
