Johnny Knoxville will topline the psychological thriller Night Sessions, Variety has learned.
The “Jackass” star is set to play a charismatic psychiatrist from the U.S. living in exile in Berlin, where he hosts a late-night radio show.
A rock-star therapist haunted by his past, Dr. Rick Brennan helps lonely and broken callers with their problems on his daily radio show — until his life is upended by a mysterious caller who accuses him of a horrendous crime, leading to a deadly cat and mouse game between the two.
Vienna-based Pont Pictures will produce, with Gregor Schmidinger (Nevrland) set to direct from a script by Christopher Beachum.
Describing Night Sessions as one the best scripts he’s read in a long time, Pont’s Philipp Mair Vargas says the part of Brennan is an “an actor’s showcase” and ideal for Knoxville.
Despite the Berlin setting, the film will shoot entirely in Belgrade, Serbia. “The movie is 90% inside the radio station,” notes Mair Vargas. “We found a nice location in Belgrade that has a view of the brutalist architecture and the brutalist nature of the city — it’s fantastic, a perfect fit.”
It’s a busy 2026 for Knoxville, who is currently hosting “Fear Factor: House of Fear,” has Jackass 5 coming out on June 26, and appears in Osgood Perkins’ The Young People, due out this year.