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HomeIndustry SectorFilmLovecraft Country Duo Jurnee Smollett and Misha Green Reunite for Lionsgate Thriller...

Lovecraft Country Duo Jurnee Smollett and Misha Green Reunite for Lionsgate Thriller Sunflower

Lovecraft Country duo Jurnee Smollett and Misha Green are set to reunite for the Lionsgate thriller Sunflower, which is the script that helped Green break into the business when it was voted onto the 2008 Black List.

Sunflower, which will serve as Green’s feature directorial debut, follows two women as they struggle to escape from a deranged college professor who is holding them hostage on a remote sunflower farm.

In addition to writing and directing the film, Green will also produce Sunflower alongside Craig Flores (Crawl). Meredith Wieck and Aaron Edmonds will oversee the project for Lionsgate, and production is finally expected to start this summer. I say “finally” because this project has been around almost since I first got to town, so I’ve been looking forward to it for a while as it boasts a tense, crackling script that makes me excited to see who is cast opposite Smollett.

“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 — [and] then subverted the genre and reinvented it through a new lens. 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,” Lionsgate president Nathan Kahane said in a statement.

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,” added Green. “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.”

Green and Smollett first worked together on the critically acclaimed series Underground before reuniting on Lovecraft Country, which HBO canceled after one season despite the fact that it garnered 18 Emmy nominations, including one for Outstanding Drama Series. Green and Smollett were also nominated for their respective writing and acting efforts.

Elsewhere, Green most recently wrote and produced Netflix’s upcoming Jennifer Lopez movie The Mother, while Smollett recently starred in a pair of movies for the same streamer — Spiderhead, which paired her with Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller, and Lou, which she also executive produced, and debuted at #1 on the Netflix charts. Up next for Smollett is a supporting turn alongside Oscar winners Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones in Amazon’s courtroom drama The Burial.

CAA represents Green and Smollett, who are respectively managed by Range Media Partners and Entertainment 360. Deadline broke the news about their reunion on Sunflower.

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