Isabelle Fuhrman, Ben Hardy, and Scoot McNairy are set to star in the dystopian creature feature Die by Night

Rod Blackhurst directed many short films and some music videos before he made his feature directorial debut with the post-apocalyptic horror film Here Alone. Since then, he has worked on Amanda Knox and John Wayne Gacy documentaries, as well as the Will Smith series Welcome to Earth, and directed the crime thriller Blood for Dust. Now, Variety reports that he’s moving ahead with a dystopian creature feature called Die by Night, and he has gathered a cast for the film that includes Isabelle Fuhrman of the Orphan franchise, Ben Hardy (Bohemian Rhapsody), and Scoot McNairy (Nightbitch).

Blackhurst is set to direct Die by Night from a screenplay he wrote himself, with Variety noting that the script is based on a prequel screenplay he wrote with J. Hunter Richardson that’s called The Chosen Few. So if Die by Night is successful, maybe we’ll see Blackhurst make the prequel The Chosen Few as well.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where long stretches of night plunge the world into chaos, the story sees creatures known as The Horde hunt in the dark. Runaway Lucia (Fuhrman) must find her way to The Wall where safety awaits, while an injured but determined Barry (Hardy) promises to get them there. But The Horde are not the only threat out there. The Clans — tribes of people whose survival and prosperity depends on selling and trading humans to gain strength in numbers — also stand in their way. In this propulsive thriller playing out over the course of one night, the only way to survive the to see a new day is to trust each other and stay in the light until they make it to The Wall.

Witchcraft Motion Picture Company’s Noah Lang is producing the film with Story in the Sky’s Ben Shields Catlin. Dave Bishop and George Hamilton of Protagonist Pictures are executive producing.

Blackhurst provided the following statement: “This film was born from the fears and anxieties that came with becoming a father for the first time, the overwhelming desire to somehow protect my daughter from the dark forces that exist in the world — from the dangerous ideologies that fuel the self-righteous, and of the impossible choices we must make in the face of chaos. We’re pleased as punch to be partnering with Protagonist whose taste and prestige precedes them; they make the kinds of films I love and immediately understood the duality of Die by Night as both a mad genre film and a story about us and the times we’re living in but depicted in the most fantastical ways.“

Bishop added, “Die by Night promises to be a nail-biting, action-packed thriller with non-stop jump scares. Rod’s vision of a dark, dystopian, post-apocalyptic new world, combined with the terrifying hordes of creatures conceived by the industry’s top designers, will reach out and grab the audience not letting go until the credits roll.” Shields Catlin and Lang had this to say: “Die by Night is the type of film we wished we could have seen at our neighborhood theatre when we were kids, begging our older brothers to sneak us in somehow — visceral, hardcore, relentless, and scary. The sort of film that we can’t show our kids just yet, but can’t wait until they are old enough that we can.“

The hordes of creatures we’ll be seeing in the film are designed by Vincent Proce, whose previous credits include the Smile films and It: Chapter 2.

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