Starring in M. Night Shyamalan's Split, James McAvoy put on one of the most impressive performances of his career – playing an individual who has a rather intense and unique case of dissociative identity disorder. That hit was followed up a couple years later with the release of Glass in 2019, and now, McAvoy is ready to reteam with Blumhouse (the horror-centric studio that produced both of those films) by signing on for what sounds like a very exciting new project.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Blumhouse is now developing a remake of the Danish psychological horror film Gæsterne (also known as Speak No Evil), and James McAvoy is attached to play the lead. The project is coming together very quickly, as evidenced by the fact that Universal Pictures – which has a distribution deal with Blumhouse – has already set the movie with a August 9, 2024 release date.
While the original film was directed by Christian Tafdrup, the remake of Speak No Evil will be helmed by British filmmaker James Watkins, who has some terrific genre cred. In 2008, he made his feature directorial debut with the brutal horror film Eden Lake starring Michael Fassbender and Kelly Reilly, and four years later he made The Woman In Black starring Daniel Radcliffe. He made the creepy blackmail-centric Black Mirror Season 3 episode "Shut Up and Dance," and most recently he directed all six episodes of the miniseries The Ipcress File, based on the spy thriller novel of the same name by Len Deighton.
Speak No Evil had its world premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and it centers on a couple who are invited away to a country house for a weekend only to find themselves trapped in an escalating nightmare. In addition to directing, James Watkins will also be writing the script.
As far as horror projects are concerned, James McAvoy's film in the genre was Andy Muschietti's IT Chapter 2 in 2019 where he played the adult version of protagonist Bill Denbrough. The Scottish actor has mostly been busy on the small screen as of late, playing Lord Asriel in the adaptation of His Dark Materials (which came to an end after three seasons in 2022), but he recently played himself for a cameo in Judd Apatow's 2022 Netflix film The Bubble.
There are a few key roles to be cast in Speak No Evil opposite James McAvoy, and more news about the project will probably follow soon as production likely isn't far off with the project's set August 2024 release date. Stay tuned for more updates about the remake, and for a look ahead at all of the scary movies set to come out in the coming months, check out our Upcoming Horror guide.
