Jeff Daniels says the Cold War thriller he stars in carries an uncomfortable relevance to 2026, as more nations chase nuclear weapons than at the height of the arms race he depicts on screen.

“The Newsroom” alum plays President Ronald Reagan in “The Brink of War,” which opened in theaters Friday and dramatizes the October 1986 Reykjavik summit between Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, played by Jared Harris. The film centers on a weekend of high-stakes negotiations over eliminating nuclear arms that ultimately ended without a signed deal but reshaped the trajectory of the Cold War.

“The world is still a dangerous place,” Mr. Daniels, 71, told UPI in a Zoom interview, adding that more countries possess nuclear weapons now than in 1986 and that the world again risks drifting toward mutually assured destruction. 

Mr. Harris, who played Valery Legasov in HBO’s “Chernobyl,” said, “The desire for something like this is to remind people what statesmen look like,” describing two leaders who overcame decades of enmity to search for common ground. 

Writer-director Michael Russell Gunn told Fox News the project was inspired by conversations with former Secretary of State George Shultz, who provided declassified transcripts that shaped the script and to whom the film is dedicated. Gunn said he wanted the story to serve as a model for resolving today’s conflicts through sustained dialogue rather than confrontation.

The Reykjavik meeting, though it broke down without an agreement, laid groundwork for the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which required the U.S. and Soviet Union to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. Reagan himself, in remarks after the summit, said negotiators had come closer than ever before to a real reduction of strategic and intermediate-range weapons, and that eliminating offensive ballistic missiles by 1996 once seemed an impossible dream but was now on the table for both sides.

The cast also includes Hope Davis as Nancy Reagan, Branka Katic as Raisa Gorbachev and J.K. Simmons as Shultz. 

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