David Robert Mitchell, director of It Follows and Under The Silver Lake, is reportedly starting on his next film in March. Flowervale Street will star Anne Hathaway and also dinosaurs.
In October, it was announced that director David Robert Mitchell is going to direct They Follow – a sequel to his breakthrough 2014 horror, It Follows.
At the time, reports suggested that the sequel would begin filming in 2024 – but it now sounds as though Mitchell is going to get started on an entirely separate project first. Called Flowervale Street, it’s described as “a mystery thriller with dinosaurs set in the 80s” akin to A Quiet Place, and will star Anne Hathaway. (Oscar Isaac’s name has also been attached, but he hasn’t been confirmed as yet.)
Word of the film got around in March 2023, when Hollywood trade outlets reported that Mitchell had partnered with JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot and Warner Bros Pictures to make a “thrill ride” shot in IMAX. Mitchell has written the script himself, and the plot is said to be about a mother (Hathaway) looking for her two missing children; where the dinosaurs figure in the mystery isn’t currently clear.
According to World Of Reel, Flowervale Street will begin production in March after a couple of delays – Production List suggests shooting was originally going to begin in July 2023, which was slap bang in the middle of all those strikes that hit Hollywood last year. There were then reports that it would start production in the autumn of 2023, but that evidently didn’t happen, either.
It’s an intriguing-sounding project, though, not least because of its connection to Bad Robot. The title Flowervale Street has strong echoes of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Dan Trachtenberg’s excellent 2016 suspense horror that served as a semi-sequel to (or spin-off from) Matt Reeves’ 2008 monster movie, Cloverfield. Both were produced by Bad Robot.
Could Mitchell be working on a secret Cloverfield spin-off of some sort, with Flowervale Street being its working title? Or is it even a sequel, given that it’s been described as a ‘blockbuster’ rather than a low-budget item like 10 Cloverfield Lane? The reference to a ‘dinosaur’ could also be a bit of a misdirect, and a veiled reference to the aquatic kaiju from Cloverfield.
Certainly, Cloverfield was shrouded in secrecy in the run-up to its release, and featured one of the most unusual marketing campaigns in cinema history. It’s just – just – possible that Mitchell’s film is following suit. He’d certainly be a good fit for a genre film like 10 Cloverfield Lane, given his ability to generate suspense and dreamlike atmosphere.
This is all speculation, admittedly, and it’s likely to be many months before we can glean anything certain. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more.
