PRODUCTION / FUNDING Ireland / USA
Ciarán Foy’s Samara Weaving- and Nicholas Braun-starring Hivemind enters production
- The Irish director is now filming the environmental thriller, with Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Pictures among the producers and a Prime Video release on the cards
Irish filmmaker Ciarán Foy is currently shooting the environmental thriller Hivemind in Dublin, with Samara Weaving and Nicholas Braun leading the cast. The project brings together US outfits Thunder Road and Badlands with Dublin-based Wild Atlantic Pictures, while Amazon MGM Studios has boarded the film and plans to release it internationally on Prime Video.
Penned by Peter Gaffney (Yeti, Don’t Go in the Water), Hivemind centres on the emergence of a new breed of killer wasps. As the threat escalates, a group of small-town authorities are forced to work together in an attempt to contain it before it develops into a deadly global outbreak. Badlands acquired Gaffney’s original screenplay last year.
The film is being produced by Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee and Diarmaid McGrath for Thunder Road (USA), alongside Scott Strauss for Badlands (USA), Macdara Kelleher and John Keville for Wild Atlantic Pictures (Ireland), as well as Adam Rodin and Gaffney. The project is backed by Renegade Capital, with Jon Shiffman and Andrew Schwartzberg serving as executive producers. CAA Media Finance and Verve are handling domestic sales.
The production marks Foy’s latest return to genre filmmaking. The Irish director made his feature debut with the psychological horror Citadel, which premiered at SXSW, where it won the Midnighter Audience Award. He subsequently directed the Blumhouse sequel Sinister 2 and the Netflix horror feature Eli, as well as episodes of series including Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor and Sweet Tooth.
Weaving has built up a substantial body of genre work through titles including the Ready or Not franchise and Scream VI. She recently reprised her role in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come and has also been cast as Emma Frost in Marvel Studios’ upcoming X-Men film.
Braun is best known internationally for playing Cousin Greg in HBO’s Succession, a performance that earned him three Emmy nominations. His upcoming work also includes Ruben Östlund’s The Entertainment System Is Down, in which he appears alongside Kirsten Dunst, Keanu Reeves and Daniel Brühl (see the news).
Principal photography on Hivemind is currently under way in Dublin. A release date has yet to be announced.
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