Susan Sarandon and Topher Grace Join Indie Thriller The Calling

When the words “independent serial killer thriller” all come together like that, it brings to mind a certain kind of…how do you say it…stinking piece of crap. The cinema world is flooded with stuff like that, so all exceptions to that normalcy are certainly welcome around these parts.

With any luck, that will happen with Jason Stone’s The Calling, an adaptation of the novel written by Inger Ash Wolfe – a pseudonym of poet and author Michael Redhill. The plot itself is intriguing enough, but what piques pour interest is the involvement of Susan Sarandon and Topher Grace, both of whom have signed on to the project, according to Deadline. The Calling is Stone’s debut feature, and it’s also the first feature screenplay for Scott Abramovitch.

Sarandon will be playing Detective Inspector Hazel Micallef, a woman who's investigating the murder of an elderly woman, "which leads her to a serial killer driven by a higher calling. Grace will play an ambitious police officer recently transferred from Toronto who becomes Sarandon’s right hand man. There’s no denying this film picked up quite a bit of inspiration from David Fincher’s Se7en along the way.

Sarandon and Grace can actually be seen together in Justin Zackham’s The Big Wedding when it opens April 26. Grace just finished filming A Many Splintered Thing, directed by Justin Reardon. Sarandon, last seen in Cloud Atlas, can next be seen in Ping Pong Summer and the Errol Flynn biopic The Last of Robin Hood.

Production on The Calling began this week.

Nick Venable
Assistant Managing Editor

Nick is a Cajun Country native and an Assistant Managing Editor with a focus on TV and features. His humble origin story with CinemaBlend began all the way back in the pre-streaming era, circa 2009, as a freelancing DVD reviewer and TV recapper.  Nick leapfrogged over to the small screen to cover more and more television news and interviews, eventually taking over the section for the current era and covering topics like Yellowstone, The Walking Dead and horror. Born in Louisiana and currently living in Texas — Who Dat Nation over America’s Team all day, all night — Nick spent several years in the hospitality industry, and also worked as a 911 operator. If you ever happened to hear his music or read his comics/short stories, you have his sympathy.