Ziad Doueiri, whose Lebanon-set The Insult is competing at Venice Film Festival, is set to direct Ghost Element, a supernatural thriller that will mark his most ambitious film to date, says Variety.
The story, adapted to present times, “centers on a group of 12 scientists from different nationalities, ethnic backgrounds, and religions, who are sent on a doomed mission to the Australian desert in order to find Thorium, a precious fuel. As the mission goes wrong, the group gets stuck in the desert and finds refuge in a cave. But strange things start happening and the scientists start dying after suffering from hallucinations or supernatural visions. Each death creates new tensions within the group and triggers latent conflicts between the scientists, some of whom are from the U.S., Syria, and Israel.”
Brehat said the film will different from other supernatural thrillers such as The Thing in that the fantastic elements are suggested rather than seen but it will be as suspenseful.
Reteaming Doueiri with his producer Jean Brehat at Paris-based banner Tessalit Prods., Ghost Element is based on “Le Tambour d’angoisse,” a novel written by B.R. Bruss and published by Marabout in 1973. The film will partly shoot in English.