Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, director Lee Cronin plans to terrify you again.
Cronin is set to follow up this year’s Evil Dead Rise with a new water-based horror thriller called Thaw. The Hollywood Reporter broke the story, announcing Cronin will direct a script he rewrote, based initially on Jeremy Passmore’s spec script.
The film is “set years after the polar ice caps have melted and sea levels have risen; the story follows a group of survivors at sea searching for a new home. Their prayers are answered with the discovery of an inhabitable town, that is until they encounter a new nightmare living just below the water’s surface.”
THR reports Van Toffler and David Gale of Gunpowder & Sky, as well as Adam Goldworm of Aperture, are attached as producers. Goldworm helped develop the project as an original spec with Passmore before it was sold to Gunpowder & Sky and is now being developed as a joint project.
SEE ALSO: Evil Dead Rise director promises “an extraordinary amount of vicious, malevolent Deadites.”
Lee Cronin is best known for directing the Sundance hit The Hole in the Ground, which A24 later released. Cronin will next helm this spring’s gore-fest Evil Dead Rise, the latest entry in the long-running franchise.
In the fifth Evil Dead film, a road-weary Beth pays an overdue visit to her older sister Ellie, who is raising three kids on her own in a cramped L.A apartment. The sisters’ reunion is cut short by the discovery of a mysterious book deep in the bowels of Ellie’s building, giving rise to flesh-possessing demons and thrusting Beth into a primal battle for survival as she is faced with the most nightmarish version of motherhood imaginable.
Evil Dead Rise is directed by Lee Cronin (The Hole in the Ground), with Sam Raimi, Bruce Cambell, and Rob Tapert producing. Featuring in the cast are Lily Sullivan (I Met a Girl), Alyssa Sutherland (The Mist), Morgan Davies (The End), Gabrielle Echols (Reminiscence), and Nell Fisher (Northspur).
Evil Dead Rise is set for release on April 21st.
