Ike Barinholtz has joined the cast of Blumhouse and writer Damon Lindelof’s thriller, The Hunt. Blumhouse founder Jason Blum now has popular spooky franchises like Insidious, Paranormal Activity, and The Purge under his belt, in addition to (for the time being) one-off hits like Get Out. However, his resume extends beyond horror to Oscar-winning films that blend genres, like Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash and, most recently, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman. Blum already has a handful of similarly subversive offerings in the pipeline, including Fantasy Island and The Hunt.
The latter - which, to clarify, has nothing to do with Get Out filmmaker Jordan Peele’s Nazi-hunting series of the same name - is being written by Lindelof and directed by Z for Zachariah helmer Craig Zobel (who previously worked with Lindelof on The Leftovers). Production is already under on the movie and the confirmed cast so far includes American Horror Story’s Emma Roberts, Justin Hartley (This is Us), and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Glenn Howerton in leading roles. We can now formally add another busy actor to that roster.
Deadline is reporting that Barinholtz has been added to The Hunt’s cast, ahead of its theatrical release later this year on October 18. The actor is coming off his directorial debut on last year’s The Oath (which he also costarred in) and will play a supporting role in Mindy Kaling’s comedy Late Night in a few months. He will also show up on Peele and CBS All Access’ Twilight Zone revival series, which launches at the start of April.
Official plot details for The Hunt are being kept under-wraps right now, but it’s been reported that the film will follow a group of characters being hunted down, a la Battle Royale. Lindelof’s script has been described as a political action-thriller, with the implication being that those who’re being hunted are of a different political affiliation than those who’re trying to kill them. Assuming that’s accurate, it sounds like an intriguing way to explore the current political atmosphere through the lens of genre. Barinholtz, for his part, did something similar on The Oath, which is a dark satire about a family whose Thanksgiving holiday goes off the deep end as the direct result of an extremely controversial White House policy announcement.
Between The Hunt and HBO’s upcoming Watchmen show (which he created), Lindelof is clearly looking to add his two cents to the larger conversation about the modern political climate and zeitgeist. The writer-producer has never been afraid to get ambitious with his screenplays - and though the resulting movies or TV series can be polarizing (the LOST finale, Prometheus, The Leftovers), they’re certainly never boring or uninteresting. That alone bodes well for The Hunt, especially with Blum producing and Zobel directing what’s looking like a pretty solid cast.
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Source: Deadline
