After making their Hollywood debuts Olivia DeJonge and Levi Miller will star in Safe Neighborhood, a US-set thriller which will shoot in Sydney in January.
US-based Australian Chris Peckover will co-write and direct the film produced by Storm Vision’s Brett Thornquest and Sidonie Abbene and Best Medicine Productions’ Brion Hambel and Paul Jensen.
DeJonge ( (M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit, Hiding, Scare Campaign) will play a babysitter in a quiet US suburb who is forced to defend a 12-year-old boy (Miller) from strangers breaking into the house.
To her horror she discovers this is far from a normal home invasion. Supporting cast will be announced soon. Miller’s credits include Pan, Jasper Jones, Terra Nova and Blue Dog.
“We think it’s quite a coup to get Olivia and Levi,” Thornquest tells IF on the line from Los Angeles, where the project is being pitched to international buyers at the AFM by French-based Versatile, part of the Wild Bunch sales group. XYZ Films represents North American rights.
US writer Zack Kahn wrote Safe Neighborhood as a spec script and took it to US producers Hambel and Jensen. They approached Thornquest and Peckover came on board as co-writer and the director.
Thornquest said, “Chris and Zack have written a killer script and this film will be equally smart and stylish, scary and tense … a surefire white-knuckle ride that pushes the thriller genre in a whole new terrifying direction.”
Peckover likens the narrative to taking awkward teenagers from a John Hughes story and scorching their evening.
The production will utilise some of the key creatives from Storm Vision’s Infini and SFv1 including director of photography Carl Robertson.