Sarah Catherine Hook is going from the luxurious world of The White Lotus to the Florida Everglades for Crush, a survival thriller about a woman trapped in the crushing coils of a massive python. Deadline reports that Hook has landed the lead role in the 20th Century Studios thriller, which is set to be directed by Overlord filmmaker Julius Avery. The movie is expected to enter production in Australia this fall.
This will be Hook’s first major starring role in a feature film. She is best known for playing Piper Ratliff in the third season of HBO’s The White Lotus. She also recently appeared in Netflix’s People We Meet on Vacation. Now, she is taking on a very different kind of vacation.
In Crush, Hook will play a woman hiking alone in the Florida Everglades who wakes up to discover that she has become trapped inside the coils of a gigantic python. With every breath becoming more difficult, she has to figure out how to survive.
According to Deadline, the movie is inspired by true events and will unfold primarily in real time.
Avery has built a filmography that makes him a fitting choice for a movie like Crush. He made his feature directing debut with the crime thriller Son of a Gun before moving into World War II action-horror with Overlord. He subsequently directed the Sylvester Stallone superhero thriller Samaritan and the supernatural horror movie The Pope’s Exorcist, starring Russell Crowe. Crush will reunite Avery with the kind of action, suspense, and horror material that has become a recurring part of his work.
The screenplay was written by John Fischer, an executive at Temple Hill Entertainment who originally wrote the script under the pseudonym J.W. Archer.
The movie has had an unusual journey to the screen. As we previously reported, Fischer wrote Crush on his own time while working as Temple Hill Entertainment’s Executive Vice President of Development and Production. Rather than immediately telling his bosses that he had written the script, he submitted it to the Black List under the J.W. Archer pseudonym. The screenplay quickly attracted attention, eventually leading to a heated bidding war among studios.
20th Century Studios ultimately won the project, reportedly paying a mid-to-high six-figure amount for the script.
Temple Hill is producing the movie alongside Scott Glassgold’s 12:01 Films, with J.R. Young overseeing the project for 20th Century Studios.
Does Crush sound like a movie you’d want to see? Are you a fan of Sarah Catherine Hook or Julius Avery? Let us know in the comments.