Glen Powell Exits Sam Esmail's Sci-Fi Film ‘Tesseract’ Over Script Concerns

Here's a downer update on "Tesseract," the Glen Powell-starring, Sam Esmail-directed sci-fi film that landed at Amazon MGM and United Artists back in January.

“Tesseract” was supposed to shoot in London and Hungary over the summer, but those plans clearly fell through. According to Puck, Esmail believed he had Powell committed to the lead role, but the actor had "questions" about the script. Despite what Esmail thought were assurances that everything was fine, Powell ultimately bailed on the project.

Like most Esmail projects, the plot is being kept under wraps. Powell recently shot season two of "Chad Powers," his sports comedy series for Hulu, and apparently had no problems with those scripts. He also has "The Great Beyond," the J.J. Abrams-directed film that was expected to release this year before being punted to 2027.

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."

Shot in January 2025 and in post since mid-2025, "Panic Carefully” recently moved to April 2027 release. The Warner Bros. thriller has drawn positive test reactions, with a roughly 160-minute assembly cut shown last fall and trimmed since.

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," which aired on USA Network for four seasons, from 2015 to 2019.