Kate Beckinsale Action-Thriller 'Drifter' Heads to Market as The Syndicate Takes Worldwide Sales
Kate Beckinsale is locked inside a police station under siege, and The Syndicate is bringing the footage to market. The sales outfit, led by Shaun Sanghani, has boarded worldwide rights to the action-thriller Drifter, which is currently filming in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. Deadline reported the deal on 20 August 2026.
The Syndicate will shop the film to distributors at two upcoming industry markets: TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival's buyer-seller showcase, and the AFM, the American Film Market in Santa Monica. Both are where international distributors acquire finished or in-progress films for their home territories — meaning Drifter is still months away from a cinema screen, but the business of selling it starts now.
Beckinsale plays Wendy Ford, an interim police chief trapped inside her isolated station when impostors posing as FBI agents and a heavily armed mercenary team storm the building to free one of her prisoners. The premise is a contained-action setup — one location, one siege, one protagonist outgunned — a structure that travels well across territories and tends to read cleanly for international buyers.
Randall Emmett directs. His producing and financing vehicle, Convergence Entertainment, which he co-founded with Joel Cohen, fully financed the film and produces it in association with Dream Team Films. Emmett and Cohen serve as producers. Jeffrey Giles and Michael Lurie executive produce for The Syndicate.
The cast rounds out with Dermot Mulroney, Robert Knepper, and rapper Sticky Fingaz alongside Beckinsale, with Bill Sage, Beau Bommarito, Ema Horvath, Maia Kai, and John Cerasani in supporting roles.
For Beckinsale, Drifter continues a run of action-led roles that began with the Underworld franchise. For Emmett, it adds another fully financed title to a slate built on Convergence's model — the company funds the film outright, then partners with a sales agent like The Syndicate to place it territory by territory around the world. That structure lets the producers retain control of the production while handing distribution to specialists who know each market's buyers.
No release date has been set. With filming underway in Ohio and the TIFF market roughly weeks away, the earliest a finished cut would reach distributors is late 2026 — and a theatrical or streaming arrival would follow from whatever deals The Syndicate strikes in Toronto and beyond.
