Movies
‘Sunflower’ – Misha Green Directing Jurnee Smollett in Lionsgate Thriller
“Lovecraft Country” creator Misha Green will be making her feature directorial debut with Lionsgate’s upcoming thriller Sunflower, Deadline has exclusively reported this afternoon.
Jurnee Smollett (“Lovecraft Country”) will re-team with Misha Green and star in the film.
In Sunflower, two women struggle to escape from a deranged college professor who holds them hostage on a remote sunflower farm.
Green wrote the script and will also produce alongside Craig J. Flores.
“Everyone at our studio was completely drawn in by the way Misha, Jurnee, and the ‘Lovecraft Country’ team worked so confidently to create a compelling genre series – then subverted the genre and reinvented it through a new lens,” said Nathan Kahane, President of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “That’s the opportunity with Sunflower. The screenplay is unique, thrilling, and flat-out scary. It’s going to make a hell of a movie.”
Green added, “Sunflower was the first script I sold when I landed in Hollywood, and now having the opportunity to make it my first feature directorial outing feels like kismet. I couldn’t have hoped for better partners and collaborators than Nathan, the Lionsgate team, Craig, and Jurnee to help me shepherd it to the big screen.”
Recent comments from producer Jason Blum suggested that a retool was in order when last year’s The Exorcist: Believer wasn’t as successful as Blumhouse and Universal hoped. That certainly seems to be the case, as Deadline reports tonight that Mike Flanagan is in talks to direct the next Exorcist movie.
Director David Gordon Green was initially on board to direct an entire trilogy of new movies in the franchise, with The Exorcist: Believer intended to be only the first film in that three-film sequel series. Originally set to hit theaters on April 18, 2025, sequel The Exorcist: Deceiver was delayed when Green left the project.
If talks come to fruition, Flanagan will take over, likely steering the franchise in a new direction.
The first film in the trilogy was released theatrically on October 13, 2023, with Leslie Odom Jr. starring alongside a returning Ellen Burstyn from the original classic.
In Believer, “Since the death of his pregnant wife in a Haitian earthquake 12 years ago, Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom, Jr.) has raised their daughter Angela (Lidya Jewett) on his own.
“But when Angela and her friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum) disappear in the woods, only to return three days later with no memory of what happened to them, it unleashes a chain of events that will force Victor to confront the nadir of evil and, in his terror and desperation, seek out the only person alive who has witnessed anything like it before.”
The final moments of The Exorcist: Believer brought Linda Blair’s Regan MacNeil back into the fold, seeming to suggest that the legacy character could return in future installments.
As for Flanagan, the horror filmmaker has Life of Chuck on the way. Flanagan previously helmed Stephen King adaptations Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game, and he’s also known for titles including Ouija: Origin of Evil and Oculus, along with the Netflix horror shows The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
Stay tuned for more as we learn it.
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