Following the box office success of horror hits Barbarian, Weapons, and this month's Resident Evil, highly in-demand director Zach Cregger's next project, The Flood, will have more of a sci-fi slant, and the movie has now landed a massive A-list lead.
Multiple trades are reporting that Jennifer Lawrence (20th Century Fox's X-Men movies, Die My Love, The Hunger Games) is set to star in the film. Cregger will write, direct, and produce The Flood, based on his own original idea, under Warner Bros.' New Line Cinema banner.
Cregger will reunite with his Weapons producers Roy Lee and Miri Yoon of Vertigo Entertainment, and the project also has Steven Spielberg on board as an executive producer via his Amblin Entertainment banner.
This is seen as a significant casting coup for Cregger and a sign that his script is something special, as Lawrence is said to be very choosy with her projects. The Academy Award winner has mostly avoided genre fare since her breakout role in The Hunger Games, but has appeared in the likes of Passengers and Mother!
Plot details are sparse, but Cregger did share some hints during a recent Esquire profile.
"He recalls watching the 2019 sci-fi film Ad Astra, which stars Brad Pitt as an astronaut. Cregger’s wife said something along the lines of 'There’s nothing scarier than being trapped in space.' It was all he needed. 'Really?' he asked her. 'What would be the scariest thing?' He came up with an answer and immediately pitched it to Spielberg. He loved it. 'Good man,' Spielberg told him. They sold the idea for the film, titled The Flood, two days later. It’s set for release in 2028."
Dead Central has also heard that The Flood is "very Alien-esque," and follows "a deep-space captain who leads her crew to investigate a cryptic signal from a distant world, only to uncover an alien artifact that warps time, reality, and their sanity, forcing them into a confrontation with an incomprehensible intelligence."
Said Cregger in a statement, “Mike, Pam and the whole Warner Bros./New Line team were an absolute dream to collaborate with on Weapons, and I couldn’t be happier to dive in with them again. Jennifer is one of a kind, and I’m beyond excited to see her in this role.”
“Jennifer Lawrence is one of the most gifted and compelling actors working today, and we are thrilled to have her at the center of Zach’s bold and wholly original vision for The Flood. Following our extraordinary experience together on Weapons, we could not be more excited to reunite with Zach and the team at Vertigo, as well as Amblin to bring this ambitious film to audiences around the world,” said Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy.
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