Jurnee Smollett is set to reteam with her Lovecraft Country producer J.J. Abrams, as she has signed on to executive produce and star opposite Allison Janney in the Netflix thriller Lou.
Anna Foerster is directing from a script by Maggie Cohn, and Abrams is producing the movie with his Bad Robot partners Jon Cohen and Hannah Minghella. Braden Aftergood and Lindsey Weber will serve as executive producers on the project along with both Janney and Smollett.
Smollett will play a desperate mother whose daughter is kidnapped, forcing her to turn to the mysterious older woman (Janney) next door for help. As they pursue the kidnapper, they embark on a journey into the wilderness, one that will test their limits and expose dark, shocking secrets from their pasts.
Expect plenty of surprises from Bad Robot's latest "mystery box" movie, as the company has been patient with this project, wanting to get it right. The stars now seem to have aligned in its favor between Oscar winner Janney and rising star Smollett.
Smollett earned a SAG Award nomination as part of the ensemble of Lovecraft Country, in which she played Jonathan Majors' girlfriend Leti Lewis, who does battle with racists and other monsters in the Jim Crow South of the 1950s. She's in good hands here with Foerster, who has directed episodes of Outlander, Westworld and Carnival Row as well as the Kate Beckinsale-led sequel Underworld: Blood Wars.
Smollett is coming off a well-liked turn as Black Canary in the DC movie Birds of Prey, and she'll soon be seen alongside Chris Hemsworth and Miles Teller in the Joseph Kosinski movie Escape From Spiderhead, which is one of my most anticipated Netflix movies -- one that should debut on the service later this year.