Sandra plays romance-adventure novelist Loretta Sage, who finds herself kidnapped by billionaire Abigail Fairfax (Daniel Radcliffe), who has come to believe that a lost city in her latest book is actually real and demands that she lead him to it. Coming to her rescue is Alan Caprison (Channing Tatum), the cover model to her books, who has absolutely no clue on how to survive in the wild. In some ways it sounds like a modern day version of Romancing the Stone.
In describing Loretta, Sandra says, "She's a shut-in and would prefer to just stay in the safety of her home. She experienced loss years ago and just has found great comfort in her home and her books. In her brain, she doesn't feel the need to go out and have an adventure, because she writes about it. She's a historical writer, basically, but adds some sex in order to get it to sell, because no one was buying history books and she found great success that way.
"With the novel of The Lost City," she continues, "she just quickly wraps it up and gets the book out there, because she doesn't feel she has anymore in her. They bring in the cover model of the book to the convention she's at, because anything that comes out of Loretta's mouth will just bore people to tears. They know in order to keep it sexy and fun, they have to have the cover model there. What happens after that is she gets kidnapped, he feels bad and has to go get her, and they're stuck in the jungle."
Part of Sandra's inspiration to move forward with the project — which she also produces — was her not understanding why action films that have romance in them tend not to have the comedic element to go along with the adventure. "It's like you either have a romcom or you have an action adventure. So we got a little ambitious, but we got ambitious because we knew we could pull it off."
And that's simply because of the set-up with the characters. Says Sandra, "You put oil and vinegar together and you're gonna have problems. And hopefully those problems are funny. You have someone who shouldn't be in nature, in nature. You have a cover model who is trying to be the hero to get the shut-in author out of the jungle. And neither one of them should be in any atmosphere other than a hermetically-sealed building with air conditioning."
Discover The Lost City on March 25.