The cast assembling around Foxfinder just got very hard to look away from. Deadline confirmed that Tessa Thompson, best known for Creed, Thor: Ragnarok, and her recent Broadway turn opposite Adrien Brody in The Fear of 13, will star alongside two-time Emmy winner Ebon Moss-Bachrach of The Bear and The Fantastic Four: First Steps fame in Foxfinder, a psychological thriller directed by Aoife McArdle.
Severance director Aoife McArdle brings Tessa Thompson
Adolescence breakout Owen Cooper rounds out the three leads, making this one of the more interesting casts put together this year. The film is based on Dawn King’s award-winning play of the same name, which won the 2011 Papatango New Writing Prize. The screenplay has been co-written by McArdle and King, and the story is exactly the kind of thing that makes more sense the longer you sit with it.
Thompson and Moss-Bachrach play Jude and Sam, a grieving couple clinging to routine and survival on their struggling farm, whose lives come apart when William, a coldly devout government foxfinder, arrives with a mission to root out the designated enemy, the fox. As the synopsis puts it, “paranoia festers, and absurd regulations tighten their grip, suspicion replaces love, and truth itself begins to warp.“
Cooper, who has spent the past several months becoming unavoidable following the global phenomenon of Adolescence, plays William, which means his first major film role after that series puts him directly in the position of the quietly menacing outsider dismantling a household from within.
The casting makes sense in the most unsettling possible way. McArdle is not a director who does small things quietly. She directed three episodes of Severance across its first two seasons and previously helmed Kissing Candice, which premiered in Toronto’s Discovery strand in 2017.
Film4’s director, Farhana Bhula, described her as “an exceptional filmmaker of remarkable precision and imagination,” and said the project “speaks powerfully to our current moment.”
Producers Kamilla Hodøl and Emilie Jouffroy were equally direct about what drew them to the material: “Aoife is a visionary storyteller, and her bold and cinematic take on Foxfinder will be both epic and deeply probing.“
International sales will be launched at Cannes by Cornerstone and Logical Pictures Group, with WME Independent jointly representing the US rights. Production begins in Bavaria, Germany, this summer. No release date has been announced yet.
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