Stephen Lang Signs On for The Mercy Rider, Reuniting With Uli Edel

Stephen Lang, the actor best known for his role in Avatar, has signed on to star in The Mercy Rider, a modern-day Western thriller directed by Uli Edel, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which broke the news on 22 October 2026.

The pairing is a reunion of sorts. Edel directed Last Exit to Brooklyn in 1989, his English-language debut, and that film gave Lang his breakthrough performance. The new project brings the two back together 37 years later.

The script is by Richard Julian. Lang plays Joe McCabe, a former soldier and reclusive Texas rancher who takes on immigration authorities after they detain a local father. A Western thriller is a story of conflict and pursuit, usually set on the frontier. Here the frontier is the present day, and the trouble comes from a government agency rather than outlaws on horseback.

Jack Hudson plays Harvey "Hawk" Walters, a hard-line immigration agent who sits on the other side of McCabe's fight. Hudson is also a producer on the film, working with G. Mac Brown, who will produce alongside him. Casting an actor in a role opposite the lead, and then giving that same actor a producing credit, is a common way for a smaller independent project to keep its key people close to the work.

The production is set to shoot in Mexico. That is the next step in the process, and it is where the story moves from paperwork and casting into the physical work of building sets, finding locations and hiring a crew.

For Lang, the project adds another lead to a career that has moved between large studio franchises and smaller, character-driven films. For Edel, a German-born director who first made his name in Hollywood with a Brooklyn drama, it returns him to a genre and a collaborator from the early stage of his English-language work.

Nothing else has been set in public at this stage, so the next confirmed step will be the start of filming in Mexico.