The Shepherd: John Travolta and Ben Radcliffe’s short film gets streaming date

The Shepherd, a short film based on a novella of the same name by Frederick Forsyth has got a streaming date. The film is coming to Disney+Hotstar on December 1, as per the trailer of the short that came out recently. It follows a young Royal Air Force pilot flying across the North Sea on Christmas eve, who finds himself lost mid-flight over water, with no radio connectivity or electricity and limited fuel in need of a miracle to land safely. Written and directed for the screen by Iain Softley, The Shepherd has Ben Radcliffe as Freddie Hooke, the RAF pilot. Veteran actor John Travolta, who also serves as executive producer, then swoops in as a mysterious rescue pilot who saves Freddie in the nick of time.

Also starring Steven Mackintosh, Millie Kent, Simon Wilson, Iwan Bond, Claire Price, Simon Lennon, Jack Donoghue, Asan N’Jie, Olatunji Ayofe and Scarlet Grace, among others, The Shepherd has been produced by Academy Award winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron. Announcing the film’s streaming date on social media, Alfonso wrote, “I read The Shepherd by Frederick Forsyth when I was a kid and now I had the opportunity to produce a short film based upon it. Written and directed by Iain Softley and starring Ben Radcliffe and Academy award nominee John Travolta, it premiers on December 1. The filmmaker also quoted a line from the original novel by Forsyth that read, “The last of the lonely places is the sky, a trackless void, where nothing lives or grows and above it, space itself.”

Incidentally, Travolta had pitched the novella to be adapted for the screen several years ago, given his passion for flying. The actor owns several jets and has been a certified pilot for four decades. The team of The Shepherd then approached him for the role of the older pilot and he readily came onboard.