EXCLUSIVE: The Nun and Gangs Of London director Corin Hardy is set to direct high school horror movie Whistle, which Black Bear will be selling at AFM after soft-launching the project at TIFF.
Starring will be Dafne Keen (Logan), Sophie Nélisse (Yellowjackets), Sky Yang (Rebel Moon), Percy Hynes White (Wednesday) and Nick Frost (Fighting With My Family).
In Whistle, a misfit group of unwitting high school students stumble upon a cursed object, an ancient Aztec Death Whistle. They discover that blowing the whistle and the terrifying sound it emits will summon their future deaths to hunt them down. As the body count rises, the friends investigate the origins of the deadly artifact in a desperate effort to stop the horrifying chain of events that they have set in motion.
Written by Owen Egerton and adapted from his own short story, Whistle is a Canada-Ireland co-production produced by David Gross (Room) for No Trace Camping and Macdara Kelleher (The Pope’s Exorcist) for Wild Atlantic Pictures with Black Bear handling international sales.
Principal photography is due to commence the first week of November in Ontario, Canada, where it will be made under an ACTRA rather than SAG contract.
Corin Hardy said: “The premise of Whistle is simple, immediate and has a fresh, haunting mythology. A cursed object that summons your future death to come and find you. The screenplay has echoes of some of my favourite classic horrors like The Ring, A Nightmare On Elm Street or It Follows, with elements of seminal high school movies The Breakfast Club and Donnie Darko. I’m thrilled to be working with this brilliant young cast to bring this inventive, terrifying and cinematic new horror to death… I mean life.”
Producer David Gross added: “We couldn’t be happier to be working with Corin Hardy and this incredibly talented cast on Whistle – with his ability to combine strong visual sensibilities with atmosphere and emotion and a propensity for relentless, imaginative set pieces Corin has a proven track record at getting horror just right and we can’t wait to see him bring his unique take to Owen Egerton’s script.”
Hardy is best known for 2019’s The Nun which took $366M worldwide for Warner Bros., landing at No.1 at the U.S. and International Box Office. He has also worked on seasons one and two of Sky Atlantic’s award-winning series Gangs of London.
