Tessa Thompson, Owen Cooper & Ebon Moss-Bachrach Lead Chilling New Thriller FOXFINDER From SEVERENCE Director
A haunting new psychological thriller is going into development, and it’s bringing together a seriously compelling cast. Foxfinder is the latest project from director Aoife McArdle, known for her work on Severance, and it sounds like an eerie, thought-provoking ride into paranoia and control.
The film stars Tessa Thompson, Owen Cooper, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and with that trio at the center, this one already feels like something worth keeping an eye on.
Set against a bleak and unsettling backdrop, Foxfinder digs into the “absurdity of state control and societal conformity,” pulling its story from the award-winning play by Dawn King.
The original stage production picked up the 2011 Papatango New Writing Prize, and now it’s getting a cinematic reimagining with a screenplay co-written by McArdle and King herself.
The story follows Jude and Sam, a couple dealing with grief while trying to hold their fragile lives together on a struggling farm. Their already tense existence takes a sharp turn when William arrives, a government-appointed “foxfinder” whose job is to eliminate a supposed threat: foxes.
What starts as a strange assignment spirals into something far more disturbing. As paranoia creeps in and rigid rules begin to dominate their lives, trust erodes, relationships fracture, and reality itself starts to feel unreliable.
This is the kind of story that leans heavily into psychological tension, where the real danger may not be what’s being hunted, but the system doing the hunting.
Production is set to kick off in Germany, with filming planned in Bavaria during summer 2026. The project is backed by Rabbit Track Pictures and Elation Pictures, developed with Film4 and the BFI, which is contributing National Lottery funding. Komplizen Film and Trimafilm are also on board as co-producers.
On the business side, Foxfinder is heading to Cannes with Cornerstone and Logical Pictures Group handling international sales and distribution, while WME Independent joins them in representing U.S. rights.
Foxfinder could be one of those films that lands as one of those slow-burning thrillers, and it could be something pretty intense.
Source: Variety