Samara Weaving Takes on Killer Wasps in New Horror Thriller Hivemind
If there is one thing horror cinema has repeatedly taught us, it’s that nature doesn’t need much encouragement to start killing us. Sharks, spiders, crocodiles, birds and practically every other creature capable of biting, stinging or swallowing a human being have enjoyed their moment in the genre. Now it’s apparently the wasps’ turn, with production underway on Hivemind, a new environmental horror thriller starring Samara Weaving and Nicholas Braun.
The project is currently filming in Dublin under the direction of Irish filmmaker Ciarán Foy, whose previous work should immediately get the attention of horror fans. Amazon MGM Studios has boarded the film and plans to release Hivemind internationally through Prime Video, although no release date has yet been announced. News was broken by Deadline.
Written by Peter Gaffney, Hivemind centres upon the emergence of a newly evolved breed of killer wasps. When the insects begin posing a serious threat, authorities in a small town are forced to work together in an attempt to prevent the situation escalating into a deadly global outbreak. Beyond that basic premise, plot and character details are currently being kept under wraps, including precisely who Weaving and Braun will be playing.
It’s a wonderfully straightforward horror hook. Wasps are already capable of bringing an outdoor meal to an abrupt end without being genetically upgraded into anything more dangerous, so giving them the full creature-feature treatment seems almost unnecessarily cruel.
Ciarán Foy Returns to Horror
Hivemind also brings Foy firmly back into territory he knows well. The Dublin-born filmmaker made his feature debut with Citadel in 2012, a bleak psychological horror film starring Aneurin Barnard as Tommy, a widowed father suffering from agoraphobia following a brutal attack. Foy wrote and directed the film, drawing partly upon his own experience of being attacked by a group of youths and the anxiety and agoraphobia he experienced afterwards. Citadel premiered at SXSW, where it won the Audience Award in the Midnighters section, and subsequently picked up further recognition on the festival circuit.
Citadel ultimately helped Foy land one of his most recognisable assignments. After original Sinister director Scott Derrickson saw the film and praised it publicly, Foy was offered the chance to direct Sinister 2. Released in 2015, the sequel brought back James Ransone as the former deputy and continued the mythology surrounding the supernatural entity Bughuul. Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill wrote the screenplay, with Jason Blum among the producers.
Foy remained in supernatural horror with Eli in 2019, directing Charlie Shotwell, Kelly Reilly, Max Martini, Lili Taylor and Sadie Sink in the Netflix film about a seriously ill boy taken to an isolated medical facility for experimental treatment. His television work has subsequently included directing two episodes of Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Bly Manor, as well as episodes of Netflix’s Sweet Tooth.
That makes Hivemind an interesting change of monster for the filmmaker. Foy’s best-known horror work has generally dealt with psychological or supernatural threats; this time the danger has wings, a stinger and apparently enough evolutionary ambition to threaten considerably more than one small town.
Samara Weaving Knows Her Way Around a Horror Movie
Then there’s Samara Weaving, who has developed one of the strongest modern associations with horror of any actor working today. If Hivemind eventually requires somebody to be covered in blood while screaming at an enormous cloud of homicidal insects, the producers have certainly hired someone with experience.
Weaving’s genre credentials stretch back through Mayhem and Netflix’s The Babysitter, in which she played the charismatic but murderous Bee. She returned for The Babysitter: Killer Queen before cementing her status as a modern scream queen with Ready or Not, playing newlywed Grace as her wedding night descends into an extremely bloody game of hide-and-seek with her new husband’s wealthy family.
She subsequently made a memorable appearance in Scream VI, becoming part of the franchise’s long tradition of memorable opening sequences, and took the lead in Azrael, the 2024 dialogue-light survival horror film directed by E.L. Katz. More recently she returned as Grace in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, released earlier this year, continuing a run of genre roles that has made Weaving a particularly familiar face to contemporary horror audiences.
Hivemind therefore puts an established modern horror star in the hands of a director who has spent a significant portion of his own career working within the genre. It also gives Weaving something different to run away from. After murderous families, satanic babysitters, Ghostface and post-apocalyptic creatures, killer wasps feel like a perfectly reasonable next escalation.
Nicholas Braun provides the other major name announced so far. He is best known for playing Greg Hirsch in HBO’s Succession, a performance that earned him multiple Emmy nominations, while his film work has included Dream Scenario, Zola and Saturday Night. What roles Braun and Weaving occupy within Hivemind’s threatened community have not yet been disclosed, so anything more specific at this stage would simply be guesswork.
Killer Wasps Take Flight
Hivemind originated as a spec screenplay by Peter Gaffney and was acquired by Badlands, the genre label formed through a partnership involving Thunder Road and former Screen Gems executive Scott Strauss. Badlands is also behind the upcoming spider horror film Crawlers, suggesting the label isn’t particularly interested in helping anyone overcome their fear of things with too many legs.
The production team includes Basil Iwanyk, Erica Lee and Diarmaid McGrath for Thunder Road, Scott Strauss for Badlands, and Macdara Kelleher and John Keville for Wild Atlantic Pictures, alongside Adam Rodin and Gaffney. With filming now underway in Dublin, further casting announcements are expected as production continues.
There is currently no confirmed release date for Hivemind, and exactly what these evolved wasps look like – or what has caused their evolution – remains unknown. What we do know is that Ciarán Foy is directing, Samara Weaving and Nicholas Braun are leading the cast, and a small town is going to find itself standing between a swarm of killer wasps and a potentially global catastrophe.
