Voltage Pictures has inaugurated international sales on the new suspense-thriller, Play Dead starring fast rising star Bailee Madison whose credits include HBO Max’s “Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin,” The Strangers: Prey at Night with Christina Hendricks and Twentieth Century Fox’s Parental Guidance directed by Andy Fickman and starring Billy Crystal, Bette Midler and Marisa Tomei. Directed by Patrick Lussier (Drive Angry, My Bloody Valentine, Dracula 2000), Madison is joined by cast members Jerry O’Connell (“Billions,” “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” Scary Movie 5), Anthony Turpel (“Love Victor,” “The Bold and the Beautiful”), Chris Butler (”The Good Wife,” Rescue Dawn), Chris Lee (“Legacies”) and Jorge-Luis Pallo (Cry Macho, Eagle Eye, Furious 7), it was announced today by President & COO Jonathan Deckter.
Voltage will launch the feature, that is currently in post production, to international distributors at the upcoming Marche du Film.
Written by Adam Mason (Blood River, Song Bird, Hangman) & Simon Boyes (Blood River, Song Bird, Hangman), Play Dead is produced by regular Voltage collaborator Lucas Jarach (Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman, Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman), Bradley Pilz (Seberg,The Wolf Hour), Johannes Roberts (Dir. Resident Evil:Welcome to Raccoon City, 47 Meters Down) and Adam Mason. Nicolas Chartier (Dallas Buyers Club,Hurt Locker), Jonathan Deckter (I Feel Pretty, After We Collided, Ava), Adam Hendricks (Agnes, The Wind, producer Black Christmas), Greg Gilreath (Agnes, Black Christmas, The Wind) and Simon Boyes serve as executive producers.
In Play Dead criminology student Chloe (Bailee Madison) fakes her own death in order to break into a local small-town morgue to steal a piece of evidence that ties her younger brother to a crime. Once inside, she quickly learns that the coroner (Jerry O’Connell) is using the morgue as a front for his sick and twisted business: selling body parts. When the coroner discovers that Chloe is not dead, a frightening game of cat-and-mouse ensues, and Chloe soon finds that the scariest thing about the morgue is not the dead, but the living.
“Patrick has created a nightmarish vision of the spine tingling script from masters of fright Adam Mason and Simon Boyes,” said Deckter. “Bailee Madison is an electrifying protagonist in this hair raising tale that we know will capture the imagination and mesmerize our distributors. She blew us away with her performance in the film and know Bailee is absolutely heading for stardom.”
“Shot inside the actual morgue of an abandoned, and probably haunted, insane asylum added to the terrifying nature of this non-stop edge-of-your-seat thriller led by master of suspense Patrick Lussier.”
Deckter negotiated the international rights deal with producers Lucas Jarach and Bradley Pilz.
Madison is repped by Gersh, Management 360 and Derek Kroeger at Myman Greenspan. O’Connell is repped by ICM Partners, 3 Arts and Ziffren Law.
ABOUT VOLTAGE PICTURES
Voltage Pictures, established in 2005, is the leading privately held, film and television production, financing and sales entity. Voltage has won six Academy Awards including Best Picture for The Hurt Locker, and three Academy Awards for Dallas Buyers Club.
The current Voltage film slate includes the highly anticipated action-thriller Last Seen Alive starring Gerard Butler, Jaimie Alexander, Russell Hornsby and Ethan Embry, which releases June 3rd, 2022 and the biopic Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid and Penelope Ann Miller with Academy Award-winner John Voight.
Voltage represented worldwide rights on After, based on the internationally best-selling series of books, that debuted number one at the box office in 17 international territories including Germany and Italy when released in April 2019, grossing over $70m worldwide. The highly anticipated sequel, After We Collided, opened in September 2020 and grossed nearly $50m worldwide; the third film in the franchise, After We Fell, opened in select territories in September 2021, and has grossed over $32m worldwide to date. The fourth and final installment, After Ever Happy, is slated for a September 7, 2022 release.
Following the success of the After franchise, Voltage has emerged as an industry leader in the YA romance space; the company also sold international rights on the heart-warming romances Finding You starring Katherine McNamara, Tom Everett Scott and Vanessa Redgrave; Time Is Up, starring social media sensation Bella Thorne and Italian popstar Benjamin Mascolo. Voltage also sold-out worldwide rights on the best-selling YA novel adaptation Words on Bathroom Walls, starring Charlie Plummer, Andy García, Taylor Russell, AnnaSophia Robb, Molly Parker and Walton Goggins which was released theatrically in August 2020.
The company is also representing worldwide rights on Roger Kumble’s (Cruel Intentions, After We Collided) YA adaption of the New York Times bestselling novel Beautiful Disaster, starring Dylan Sprouse, Virginia Gardner, Austin North and Libe Barer.
Additional releases include I Feel Pretty starring Amy Schumer and Michelle Williams, which grossed nearly $100 million worldwide upon its release in 2018, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile starring Zac Efron and Lily Collins, which premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film festival and subsequently sold to Netflix in a multi-territory deal.
