Melissa Leo, Jacob Scipio & Lou Llobell Join André Øvredal’s Paramount Horror Pic​on January 31, 2025 at 7:36 pm

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar winner Melissa Leo, Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell are boarding André Øvredal’s untitled horror movie for Paramount and Walter Hamada’s 18hz.

Former Warner Bros production executive Walter Hamada is producing via his production company 18hz, as part of his first-look deal with Paramount, alongside It screenwriter Gary Dauberman via Coin Operated. The screenplay written by Zachary Donohue and T.W. Burgess has a plot that’s, of course, under wraps. Hamada is also producing Primate, which is in post-production, at Paramount.

Leo won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the 2010 Paramount David O. Russell directed The Fighter. She’s starred in such movies as Frozen River on which she received an Oscar nom for Best Actress,and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners, The Equalizer franchise, Oliver Stone’s Snowden, and the HBO series I Know This Much Is True. She is repped by Gersh.

Scipio’s feature credits include Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Expendables 4, Without Remorse, and the Netflix series Pieces of Her. He’s repped by CAA, Luber Roklin, and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole.

Llobell has starred on the Apple TV+ series Foundation and in the Neil Burger directed sci-fi movie Voyagers starring Colin Farrell, Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp. The actress is repped by
Denton Brierley, Verve Talent and Literary Agency and Goodman Genow Schenkman Smelkinson
& Christopher.

Hamada signed a multi-year production pact with Paramount in November 2022. During his time at New Line, he steered the Conjuring and It movies, and later the DC features at Warner Bros.

Øvredal’s feature canon includes Mortal and Amblin’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark was a cash cow for Lionsgate-owned CBS Films, opening to $20.9 million in August 2019 and finaling at $68.9M stateside and $104.5M global.