Robert De Niro joins John Travolta for Killing Season

Nicolas Cage and John Travolta won't face off again anytime soon: Robert De Niro has replaced Cage in action thriller Killing Season (formerly Shrapnel ).

The film is based on a Black List script by Evan Daugherty ( Snow White And The Huntsman ), and sees two blokes engage a bit of cross-country cat-and-mouse action.

De Niro will play a military vet (as in veteran, not veterinarian), enjoying a relaxing break in a cabin in the Appalachian Mountains.

Travolta's playing a 'European' tourist, who befriends De Niro's character before revealing the fact he's a vengeful Serbian soldier out for blood. A one-on-one battle inevitably ensues.

While grizzled blokes in the wild premises are always going to snare our interest (we're unreasonably excited about Liam Neeson vs wolves in The Grey ), this will always be tinged with disappointment concerning the inherent lack of Face/Off reunion for us.

Oh, and Mark Steven Johnson ( Ghost Rider , When In Rome ) is taking over directing duties from a departing John McTiernan. That doesn't bode well.

Travolta and Cage were also rumoured to be reuniting on Sea Trial too, though things have been very quiet on that front recently. Won't somebody just go ahead and greenlight Face/Off 2 !

Matt Maytum
Editor, Total Film

I'm the Editor at Total Film magazine, overseeing the running of the mag, and generally obsessing over all things Nolan, Kubrick and Pixar. Over the past decade I've worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+, and you can often hear me nattering on the Inside Total Film podcast. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.