Yahoo Lifestyle Natasha Lyonne To Star In & Produce Horror Comedy ‘Basketful Of Heads’ For Animal Pictures; Ana Lily Amirpour Adapting Joe Hill Comic Series
EXCLUSIVE: Bluestone Entertainment has locked down rights to Basketful of Heads, a darkly comedic horror comic series from DC’s Hill House, enlisting Natasha Lyonne (Poker Face) to star and produce, and Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night) to direct from her own script.
A seven-issue series created by New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill (The Black Phone), and illustrated by Leomacs, Basketful of Heads watches as June discovers that every bad guy she decapitates leaves a talking head behind. With every kill, June adds a new voice to her twisted Greek chorus — and another eight pounds of literal baggage.
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Bluestone will finance the darkly funny action horror comedy, with Akiva Goldsman and Greg Lessans producing for Weed Road alongside Director of Development Shiva Nassab, who brought the project to the company and will be overseeing. Lyonne will produce for Animal Pictures, with Animal Pictures’ EVP of Film and Television Dannah Shinder exec producing, and Animal’s Creative Executive Max Ferguson overseeing. Richard Saperstein, Brooke Saperstein, and Annie Saperstein will produce for Bluestone Entertainment, with Beau Turpin exec producing for the company.
In a statement to Deadline, Lyonne shared that she’s “thrilled to work with the ingenious auteur Ana Lily Amirpour on such beloved IP and so grateful that Akiva and Bluestone brought it to us at Animal to develop. This one’s gonna be a knockout!”
Said Amirpour: “I’m very excited to team up with the wickedly funny and brilliant Natasha Lyonne to adapt this comic into a film. We’re going to bring to life a new type of antihero who gets pulled into a bizarre adventure that unleashes something inside her and turns her life inside out. It’s gonna be darkly funny, surreal and bloody as hell.”
Through her Animal Pictures, Lyonne recently produced the Independent Spirit Award-winning His Three Daughters, an acclaimed sibling drama in which she stars opposite Elizabeth Olsen and Carrie Coon. Lyonne also currently stars in Animal’s Emmy-nominated series Poker Face, which is heading into its second season, and will next be seen in Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, as well as 3000 Pictures’ Klara and the Sun. Other current projects for Animal Pictures include Amazon’s The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy and Apple’s Loot.
Amirpour broke out a little over a decade ago with the Iranian vampire Western A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Since then, she’s directed The Bad Batch, starring Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, Suki Waterhouse and Jim Carrey, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, which also premiered at Venice. She’s also directed on series including The Night Agent, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities and Legion, among others.
Weed Road Pictures is behind Goldsman’s series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is heading into its fourth season. Upcoming, the company also has an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six, with Chad Stahelski directing and Michael B. Jordan starring, for Paramount. Goldsman also penned Warner Bros’ upcoming sequel to Practical Magic, starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman.
Most recently, Bluestone produced and co-financed James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek and Michael Shannon, which WME Independent is selling in Berlin.
Lyonne is represented by CAA, Untitled Entertainment, and Schreck Rose Dapello; Amirpour by CAA and Jackoway Austen; Goldsman by CAA and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller; and Hill by Hotchkiss Daily & Associates and The Choate Agency. Leomacs was represented in the deal by Hotchkiss Daily & Associates., et al.
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