Misha Green Making Feature Directorial Debut With Lionsgate’s ‘Sunflower’, Reteams With ‘Lovecraft Country’s Jurnee Smollett
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: Misha Green will reteam with her Underground and Lovecraft Country star Jurnee Smollett for the Lionsgate thriller Sunflower.
Green will direct off a script she wrote and produce with Craig J. Flores and his Bread and Circuses Entertainment banner. In Sunflower, two women struggle to escape from a deranged college professor who holds them hostage on a remote sunflower farm.
Sunflower will be Green and Smollett’s next project, and the studio is eyeing a summer start for production. Smollett and Green first worked together on the critically acclaimed WGN series Underground before reuniting for their ten-episode HBO limited series Lovecraft Country, which counted 18 Emmy nominations, including nods for Smollett’s performance, Green’s writing, and Outstanding Drama Series, while Smollett was nominated for Emmy, NAACP and SAG Awards for her performance. “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 – then subverted the genre and reinvented it through a new lens,” said Nathan Kahane, President of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “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.” Green added, “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.
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