Joel Kinnaman Sets New Thriller With A Horrifying Twist

Published Nov 14, 2026, 2:10 PM EST Matthew Rudoy is one of ScreenRant's Movie & TV News Editors. He covers the latest in movie & TV news, with a focus on major franchises like Star Wars, The Boys, and Game of Thrones, and also writes some features and reviews. He wrote lists for ScreenRant from 2017-2022, became a news writer in 2023, a senior staff writer in 2024, and an editor in 2025. Joel Kinnaman can't get enough of the thriller genre. When looking just at Joel Kinnaman's movies and shows released in 2026, he has starred in Netflix's crime thriller Jo Nesbo's Detective Hole, Apple TV's psychological thriller Imperfect Women, the political thriller High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam, and Renny Harlin's action thriller film The Beast. Even though Imperfect Women was intended to be a miniseries, the show's success led to a second season 2 being greenlit. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kinnaman has now been cast in a new thriller movie called The Cell, which is scheduled to begin filming in February. It features Kinnaman in the role of investigative journalist Ryan Weaver, who wakes up as a captive inside a secret medical testing facility where patients are drugged, isolated, and experimented on after he tries to expose a powerful pharmaceutical company. His body starts to mutate, and as he desperately searches for a way to free himself, he discovers something even more sinister in the facility's lower levels. The Cell will be directed by Adam Cooper, based on a screenplay written by Evan Turner and Ben Zazove. Read Cooper's statement about Kinnaman's casting below: For a character that is in almost every frame of the film, it is a gift to have a lead actor as talented as Joel embody them, and I can’t wait to share this story with audiences. Worldwide sales are being launched by Highland Film Group at the American Film Market in Los Angeles. The project is a reunion between Highland and Cooper after collaborating on the 2024 crime thriller movie Sleeping Dogs starring Russell Crowe, Karen Gillan, and Tommy Flanagan. Prior to directing and co-writing that film, Cooper wrote the screenplays for Assassin's Creed, Allegiant, The Transporter Refueled, Exodus: Gods and Kings, and Accepted. As for The Cell's writers, Zazove's credits include Tooth Fairy 2, Sherlock Gnomes, and both he and Turner wrote The Out-Laws. Along with all the aforementioned thrillers he starred in this year, Kinnaman reprised the role of Ed Baldwin in For All Mankind season 5. He portrayed the character in all five seasons that have been released, each of which take place in a subsequent decade. Kinnaman played Rick Flag in 2016's Suicide Squad, 2021's The Suicide Squad, and Peacemaker season 2. Rearrange the movies into the correct US release order. Outside of DC, he has portrayed the titular character of 2014's Robocop, Stephen Holder in AMC and Netflix's The Killing, Will Conway in Netflix's House of Cards, Takeshi Kovacs in Netflix's Altered Carbon, and Brian Godlock in Silent Night. He received Saturn Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor in recognition of his performances in The Killing and For All Mankind, the latter of which is Apple TV's longest-running show and is confirmed to be ending with season 6. In terms of upcoming projects other than The Cell, Joel Kinnaman has the movie For Good, the Prime Video crime drama series Bishop, the Apple TV comedy drama show The Husbands, and the film sequel Run All Night 2 on the way. He played Mike Conlon in the original Run All Night, released in 2015, opposite Liam Neeson, Ed Harris, Boyd Holbrook, Genesis Rodriguez, Vincent D'Onofrio, Holt McCallany, and Common. Neeson is also returning for the sequel.