DIE BY NIGHT Adds Trio For Creature Survival Thriller As Protagonist Launches Sales Ahead Of EFM
Protagonist Pictures is taking new survival creature thriller Die By Night to the next installation of EFM which kicks off on February 13. The film’s cast includes Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan, The Hunger Games, Kevin Costner’s Horizon: an American Saga), Ben Hardy (Bohemian Rhapsody, Unicorns), and Scoot McNairy (Nightbitch, Speak No Evil).
Emmy Award nominee Rod Blackhurst (Blood for Dust, Night Swim) is directing based on the prequel screenplay, “The Chosen Few,” penned by Blackhurst and J. Hunter Richardson. UTA Independent Film Group are handling North American rights on the pic.
Die By Night is set in a post-apocalyptic world where long stretches of ‘Night’ plunge the world into chaos, creatures known as The Horde hunt in the dark. But The Horde are not the only threat out there. The Clans – tribes of people whose survival and prosperity depends on selling and trading humans to gain strength in numbers – also stand in their way. In this propulsive thriller playing out over the course of one night, the only way to survive the to see a new day is to trust each other and stay in the light until they make it to The Wall.
Fuhrman plays Lucia, a runaway must find her way to The Wall where safety awaits. Hardy plays Barry, an injured but determined survivor promises to get them there.
Creature design is spearheaded by Emmy Award-winning concept artist Vincent Proce (It Chapter 2, Smile, Smile 2). Producing are Witchcraft Motion Picture Company’s Noah Lang (Blood for Dust, Sleeping Dogs), and Story in the Sky’s Ben Shields Catlin (Sam & Kate, Stealing Pulp Fiction), with Dave Bishop and George Hamilton of Protagonist Pictures exec producing.
The announcement came today from Dave Bishop, CEO of Protagonist Pictures. UTA Independent Film Group are handling North American rights.
“Die By Night promises to be a nail-biting, action-packed thriller with non-stop jump scares,” said Bishop. “Rod’s vision of a dark, dystopian, post-apocalyptic new world, combined with the terrifying hordes of creatures conceived by the industry’s top designers, will reach out and grab the audience not letting go until the credits roll.”
“This film was born from the fears and anxieties that came with becoming a father for the first time, the overwhelming desire to somehow protect my daughter from the dark forces that exist in the world – from the dangerous ideologies that fuel the self-righteous, and of the impossible choices we must make in the face of chaos,” Blackhurst said in a statement. “We’re pleased as punch to be partnering with Protagonist whose taste and prestige precedes them; they make the kinds of films I love and immediately understood the duality of Die By Night as both a mad genre film and a story about us and the times we’re living in but depicted in the most fantastical ways.”
Added Shields Catlin and Lang, “Die By Night is the type of film we wished we could have seen at our neighborhood theatre when we were kids, begging our older brothers to sneak us in somehow – visceral, hardcore, relentless, and scary. The sort of film that we can’t show our kids just yet, but can’t wait until they are old enough that we can.”
Blackhurst is best known as the Emmy nominated director and producer of the Netflix Original Documentary Amanda Knox, and the Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award Winning feature, Here Alone. He also directed and showran the Peacock docuseries “John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise,” and directed and produced the action thriller Blood For Dust, starring McNairy along with Kit Harington, Josh Lucas, and Stephen Dorff, which Blackhurst also produced through Witchcraft label with Lang. He is currently in post-production on the New French Extremity inspired horror film Dolly, starring Fabianne Therese, Seann William Scott, Ethan Suplee and American professional wrestler, Max The Impaler.
Fuhrman is repped by UTA, Luber Roklin Entertainment, and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandelbaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein; Hardy is repped by UTA, Untitled Entertainment, Independent Talent Group, and Tapestry London; McNairy is repped by UTA and The Group Management.
Blackhurst is repped by UTA, Antonio D’Intino for SpectreVision Artists, and Victoria Cook and Ben Moskowitz for Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz.
