Cannes: Joel Kinnaman to Star in Neill Blomkamp’s Alien Abduction Thriller ‘They Found Us’

Suicide Squad and RoboCop star Joel Kinnaman has signed on to play the lead in They Found Usan alien abduction thriller from South African sci-fi whizz Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium).

Kinnaman will play a father who takes his daughter Kaylee on a camping trip in the Utah wilderness, in an effort to heal their broken relationship. When they are attacked by a hostile extraterrestrial lifeform, they are forced to fight for their lives against a humanoid beast determined to kidnap them and take them to an unknown and terrifying alien world.

Blomkamp will direct They Found Us from an original script by Jeremy Slater (Fantastic FourDisney+’s Moon Knight). Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen will produce through Temple Hill Entertainment. Stuart Ford, whose AGC Studios is fully financing the project, will executive produce together with Temple Hill’s John Fischer.

The film will shoot in Australia in 2023. AGC International will launch sales in Cannes, with UTA Independent Film Group co-repping US rights.

Kinnaman just wrapped production on the action-thriller The Silent Hour from director Brad Anderson (The Machinist, Transsiberian), another AGC-backed film, and will next be seen in John Woo’s hotly-anticipated revenge actioner Silent Nightand alongside Nicolas Cage in the thriller Sympathy for the Devil from The Secrets We Keep director Yuval Adler.

Blomkamp, ​​whose last project was AGC’s low-budget supernatural horror Demonicreturns to the big screen this summer with Sony’s Gran Turismo, an adaptation of the popular racing video game, starring David Harbor and Orlando Bloom.

AGC’s SVP of Legal & Business Affairs Anant Tamirisa negotiated the deal on behalf of AGC; and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Kaller, Gellman, Meigs & Fox negotiated on behalf of Temple Hill.

Blomkamp is repped by CAA and Gendler & Kelly and Kinnaman is repped by WME and Magnolia Entertainment.