Jason Momoa, Adria Arjona and Kiefer Sutherland Join Miles Teller in Copperhead

Jason Momoa is the biggest name among today's new additions, but he's certainly not arriving alone.

Adria Arjona, Tenoch Huerta and Kiefer Sutherland have also signed on.

They join Miles Teller, whose involvement in Copperhead was announced earlier this summer.

The exact roles the four newcomers will play haven't been revealed, so there's still plenty we don't know about how this ensemble fits together.

But it's an unusually strong cast for a gritty crime thriller.

Momoa brings the enormous screen presence audiences know from Aquaman and Dune.

Huerta made a memorable MCU debut as Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.

Arjona has continued building an increasingly interesting career through projects including Hit Man, Andor and Splitsville.

And then there's Kiefer Sutherland.

If you're making a thriller involving law enforcement, conspiracies, and people discovering they can't trust those around them, putting Jack Bauer somewhere in the cast feels almost unfair.

The basic setup already sounds promising.

Copperhead begins when an undercover drug deal explodes into violence in West Texas.

In the aftermath, a veteran detective must work alongside a young federal agent.

But investigating what went wrong leads them somewhere considerably more dangerous.

The pair begin uncovering a conspiracy inside their own elite task force.

That immediately changes the story.

This isn't simply about catching whoever caused a drug deal to go bad.

It's about two investigators trying to figure out who they can trust when the corruption may be coming from inside the organisation that's supposed to help them.

And West Texas should give Swab a suitably harsh backdrop for it all.

John Swab will direct Copperhead from a screenplay written by Chad Feehan and J. Todd Scott.

Swab has built much of his career around crime stories and characters operating on the edges of society.

His previous films include Candy Land, Little Dixie and Ida Red, while his 2025 crime drama King Ivory explored the devastating impact of fentanyl trafficking.

That makes Copperhead feel like fairly natural territory for him.

The difference this time is scale.

With Teller, Momoa, Arjona, Huerta and Sutherland now filling out the ensemble, Swab has considerably more star power to play with.

There's another reason Copperhead has our attention.

Black Label Media is financing and producing the movie.

That's the company behind Sicario and Sicario: Day of the Soldado.

That doesn't mean Copperhead is going to be another Sicario, obviously.

But a tense West Texas crime thriller involving drug operations, law enforcement and corruption coming from a company with that history certainly gets our attention.

Black Label is producing alongside Teller's Lime Tree Productions and Swab's Milk Boy.

CAA Media Finance and WME Independent are representing domestic rights.

When Copperhead was first announced with Miles Teller attached, that was already enough to make the project interesting.

Today's additions change the conversation considerably.

Momoa and Teller together would have been a strong pairing on their own.

Add Arjona, Huerta and Sutherland and suddenly the movie has an ensemble capable of taking this in several different directions.

There's also something appealing about seeing these actors outside the franchises many audiences immediately associate them with.

Momoa doesn't need another superhero costume to command a screen.

Huerta proved in Wakanda Forever that he can bring enormous intensity to a character.

Arjona continues to become one of those actors whose involvement immediately makes a project more interesting.

And Sutherland has spent decades demonstrating that thrillers are very much his playground.

Now we just need to know who's playing the cop, who's playing the federal agent and — perhaps more importantly — who shouldn't be trusted.

We shouldn't have to wait long for more information to emerge.

Production on Copperhead is expected to begin later this month.

International sales are also being launched around the Toronto International Film Festival.

There's currently no confirmed release date.

With cameras only just preparing to roll, that's hardly surprising.

But the speed at which the cast is coming together suggests this one is moving properly now.

Sometimes a casting announcement completely changes how interested you are in a movie.

This is one of those times.

A Miles Teller crime thriller directed by John Swab?

Interesting.

The same movie with Jason Momoa, Adria Arjona, Tenoch Huerta and Kiefer Sutherland joining him?

Now you've got us.

The premise helps too.

An undercover drug operation goes catastrophically wrong, two investigators are forced together, and the people they're supposed to trust may be part of the problem.

That's a wonderfully old-school thriller setup.

And with Black Label Media involved, it's difficult not to think about the tension and moral ugliness that made Sicario so effective.

We're not expecting Copperhead to imitate that film.

We'd rather it didn't.

But give this cast a tough West Texas crime story, some properly murky characters, and a conspiracy worth uncovering, and there could be something very good here.

We'll be watching this one.