Julius Avery will director Overlord, a supernatural thriller set against D-Day’s Normandy invasion
Paramount Pictures and Bad Robot have today found a helmer for their upcoming WWII supernatural thriller Overlord. Variety reports that Julius Avery, best known for directing the A24 thriller Son of a Gun, will direct the film, based on an original idea by The Hunger Games screenwriter Billy Ray and Bad Robot’s own J.J. Abrams. Ray is providing the screenplay, which has been in the planning stages for nearly a decade. Most recently, The Revenant scribe Mark L. Smith did a script polish.
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Overlord, which will be produced by Abrams, is said to follow two paratroopers who, after being shot down over Normandy in the midst of the D-Day invasion, discover that a sinister Nazi experiment has given rise to an additional, supernatural evil.
According to today’s report in the trade, meetings are already underway in Hollywood to cast Overlord‘s two leads.
Prior to production on Overlord, Avery is set to direct The King of LA, Scott Free Productions‘ true tale of DEA corruption.
Last year, Bad Robot Productions released both 10 Cloverfield Lane and Star Trek Beyond through Paramount. The former, directed by Dan Trachtenberg, stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr. and brought in more than $100 million at the worldwide box office. The latter, the third entry in the rebooted big screen Star Trek timeline, was directed by Justin Lin and pulled in more than $343 million worldwide.
Does Overlord sound like a project that you’ll want to check out on the big screen? Who would you like to see cast as the film’s two leads? Share your thoughts in the comments below and check back for updates on Overlord as they become available.
