Here’s THR’s Heat Vision reporting that Glen Powell is teaming up with filmmaker Sam Esmail for a sci-fi film titled “Tesseract,” which has landed at Amazon/MGM and United Artists.
Like most Esmail projects, the plot is being kept under wraps. The project is said to call for two additional lead roles, both female, according to sources. The production is eyeing a summer shoot in London and Hungary.
Powell is currently shooting season two of “Chad Powers,” his sports comedy series for Hulu. He also has a J.J. Abrams–directed film expected to be released later this year and most recently starred in “The Running Man,” Paramount’s adaptation of the Stephen King novel directed by Edgar Wright.
The secretive Esmail is currently in post-production on “Panic Carefully,” a Warner Bros. thriller starring Julia Roberts, Elizabeth Olsen, Eddie Redmayne, and Joe Alwyn. The film has been described as a “paranoid thriller” in the vein of “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Esmail is coming off the major streaming success of “Leave the World Behind,” an apocalyptic thriller adapted from Rumaan Alam’s novel. The film was the No. 1 movie in the U.S. on Netflix for nearly three weeks and was noted for its realistic depiction of an imminent, coordinated societal collapse.
Esmail is best known as the creator of “Mr. Robot,” a television series that aired on USA Network from 2015 to 2019 over four seasons. The show, starring Rami Malek, followed a troubled cybersecurity engineer and hacker and was widely praised for its early seasons, as well as for its bold visual style and thematic ambition.
With “Tesseract,” Esmail appears to be continuing his exploration of technology-driven paranoia and high-concept storytelling, while Powell’s involvement signals another project in his busy schedule. The potential for strong work is certainly there.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.