Peter Dinklage will star in 'The Reckoner,' a new action movie from 'The Furious' director Kenji Tanigaki

Peter Dinklage is going to headline an action movie, and the people building it around him have the receipts to make that a serious proposition.

Kenji Tanigaki, who directed this year's breakout martial arts film The Furious, will direct The Reckoner, an original action feature with Dinklage attached to star. The script comes from Derek Kolstad, the writer who created John Wick. Lionsgate has closed the deal, with the Russo brothers' AGBO producing. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on July 1.

Plot details are locked away for now, which is standard at this stage and tells you nothing except that they would rather you show up curious. What is worth paying attention to is the collection of names, because each one is there for a reason.

Start with Tanigaki. He spent years as a stunt and fight coordinator before The Furious, and that film is the argument for hiring him to run his own set. It premiered in the Midnight Madness section at Toronto last September, sits at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes across 23 reviews, and got the kind of notices action nerds screenshot. RogerEbert.com called the dialogue atrocious and the plotting goofy in the same breath as praising "the most impressive fight scenes in years," which is exactly the trade you make for a movie like this. The Verge called it "brutal yet balletic." It did not translate that heat into a big domestic number, grossing a little over $6 million in the U.S. and about $31 million worldwide on Lionsgate's international rights, but nobody hires Tanigaki off the gross. They hire him off the choreography.

Then there is Kolstad, whose name on an action script now functions as a genre stamp. He built the John Wick world and most recently wrote and produced the two Bob Odenkirk Nobody movies, which are essentially a demonstration that he can turn an unexpected lead into a plausible one-man wrecking crew. That is the relevant credential here, because turning Peter Dinklage into an action star is the whole bet.

It is a good bet on paper. Dinklage has spent a career proving he can carry a scene through presence rather than size, and the modern action film has quietly stopped requiring its leads to look like linebackers. Kolstad did it with Odenkirk. Tanigaki's camera does not care how tall you are as long as the timing lands. Whether audiences buy it is the one thing none of these credits can guarantee, and it is the only question that matters once the movie is actually in front of people.

The producing side is stacked in a way that signals ambition. Kolstad and Dinklage produce, the latter through his and David Ginsberg's Estuary Films banner, alongside AGBO's Angela Russo-Otstot, Michael Disco and Kassee Whiting. Anthony and Joe Russo executive produce. The Reckoner is the latest Lionsgate-AGBO project, following the John Rambo prequel with Noah Centineo that Jalmari Helander is directing. AGBO's wider slate includes Avengers: Doomsday, a third Extraction, and Netflix's The Whisper Man, so this is not a company short on work.

No release date yet, and Dinklage has a prior commitment in the way: he is currently shooting the second season of FX's Alien: Earth. So The Reckoner is a package, not a production, and packages fall apart all the time. This one has better bones than most.