By any metric, Zach Cregger is on a hell of a filmmaking run just now. Having burst out of the blocks in 2022 with AirBnB chiller Barbarian, the sketch comedian turned genre filmmaker has since gone on to bewitch audiences with last year’s noodle-twisting psychological thriller Weapons, and is currently riding high at the box office with survival horror game adaptation Resident Evil. And in his bid to continue this hot streak, Variety is reporting that Cregger has just recruited Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence to star in his buzzy upcoming sci-fi thriller The Flood.
Cregger is set to write, direct, and produce The Flood, based on his own original idea, under Warner Bros.’ New Line Cinema banner. And while any sort of concrete plot or premise descriptions are being kept in a watertight container for the time being, we have had some hints as to what Cregger’s been working on already. In a recent interview with Esquire, Cregger shared that a viewing of Brad Pitt starrer Ad Astra with his wife prompted him to think about the scariest thing that could happen to a person in space, and that his answer to that question sold producer Steven Spielberg on the project. Elsewhere, in a conversation with Men’s Health, Cregger opened up a little more, teasing a “bizarre narrative structure” and citing 2001: A Space Odyssey as a key influence on his latest movie. “I think 2001 is a really thrilling horror movie about human nature, and obviously about artificial intelligence, but it asks big questions,” said Cregger. “And I think, in that way, there’s some similarity with Flood.”
Having brought horror to a single house in Barbarian, to a suburban town in Weapons, and to a whole city in Resident Evil, a terrifying jaunt to the abyssal vacuum of space seems like a logical escalation for Cregger in his bid to thrill and chill us on ever larger, more mind-bending scales. Consider us primed and ready to let The Flood, starring Jennifer Lawrence, wash over us when it hits cinemas on August 11, 2028.
