What you need to know
Chris Pratt’s latest role has him mostly strapped to a chair, which is exactly what he wanted.
The 46-year-old actor will play a detective accused of murdering his wife in the thriller “Mercy,” scheduled for release in January.
The film, set in the near future, centers on a judicial system powered by AI judges who use everything from doorbell cameras to Facebook posts and text messages to determine a person’s guilt or innocence.
PEOPLE Puzzler Crossword is here! How fast can you solve it? Play now!
Craig Barritt/Getty
Pratt’s character is strapped to a futuristic chair during the 90-minute trial, and Pratt revealed at New York Comic Con that he specifically wanted to be strapped down for the entirety of the scene.
“I asked them to keep me in it,” Pratt said on an Oct. 9 panel interview with co-star Kari Reis and director Timur Bekmambetov. “That’s why I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have to pretend I was tied up.”
He continued, “I was handcuffed to this chair, both my feet and my hands, and then my head came along at the end, but I don’t want to spoil the movie! But I’m strapped to this.”
“There’s a certain amount of claustrophobia that comes naturally when you’re tied down to something, and that actually helped,” Platt added.
The father of four says getting out of his chair helped him so much that he refused to learn how to do it himself.
“They said, ‘If you want to get out, just do this,'” Pratt recalled. “Like, I don’t want to come out. I want you to lock me up so I can’t come out. It’ll help me do this performance where I’m completely trapped here.”
Pratt also explained that his character’s bare feet tied to a chair are meant to be a nod to Die Hard, the classic 1988 thriller starring Bruce Willis.
Never miss a news. Sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up to date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to human interest stories.
“Mercy” is scheduled to be released in theaters on January 23, 2026.
