Dylan McDermott (pictured) and Ana Alexander are attached to The Freezer, an action/thriller from the writing team of Shane Weisfeld and Tom Doganoglu that is set to shoot in Regina, Saskatchewan.

The film is produced by Los Angeles-based Envision Media Arts, and portrays a man (McDermott) with a mysterious past who is thrown into a walk-in freezer where he will freeze to death if he does not come up with the millions he stole from a criminal organization.

The indie pic, to be directed by Mikael Solomon, has yet to secure North American distribution.

The Freezer is also the result of 14 years of tough sledding by two Canadian screenwriters, Weisfeld, who has no writing credits, and Doganoglu who has only one, the feature film 8 Million Dollars, which he wrote and directed.

Despite that lack of a track record, both writers laboured on their own film and TV scripts, and arrived at little or no success.

“Yet despite all the rejection, we just kept plugging away because we wanted it that bad and could not see ourselves quitting by any means whatsoever,” Weisfeld told Playback.

Success did come, however, when Weisfeld and Doganoglu partnered on The Freezer, their first joint script, and secured U.S. representation.

“Now we’re at the point where this thing is going into production less than a year after we signed the option agreement, and two years since we actually wrote the script,” Weisfeld said.