By Travis Johnson
Variety is reporting that Australian director Julius Avery has been picked to direct Overlord, a supernatural-themed World War II thriller, for JJ Abrams’ production company, Bad Robot.
Based on a story by Abrams and screenwriter Billy Ray, Overlord sees two commandoes stuck far behind enemy lines during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The Dirty Duo must not only contend with Nazi soldiers and all the Saving Private Ryan-style horrors of war, but also an unearthly threat born from secret Nazi experiments. Secret Nazi experiments, especially of the occult variety, are always good value; without them, we wouldn’t have Raiders of the Lost Ark or Hellboy, and what fun would that be?
After a string of well-received short films, Avery made his feature debut with the West Australia-shot crime thriller, Son of a Gun. The film saw Brenton Thwaites’ up and coming young criminal taken under the tattooed wing of Ewan McGregor’s hardened armed robber. In an odd bit of coincidence, Thwaites is also getting into the WWII supernatural thriller game, having been cast in Eric Bress’s Ghosts of War, which we wrote about here.