Apple Original Films has unveiled the first look at The Lost Bus, a Paul Greengrass drama in which Matthew McConaughey and America Ferrera portray a school-bus driver and a teacher racing to save 22 children from California’s 2018 Camp Fire. The two-minute teaser, released online this week, positions the film as a tense survival story that will arrive in select cinemas and on Apple TV+ in fall 2025.
Greengrass co-wrote the screenplay with Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby, adapting reporter Lizzie Johnson’s nonfiction book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire. Production is backed by Apple Studios, Blumhouse Productions and Jamie Lee Curtis’ Comet Pictures; Curtis secured the rights after hearing Johnson discuss the disaster on NPR. Jason Blum, Gregory Goodman and Ingelsby produce, with Johnson serving as an executive producer.
The film dramatizes true events that unfolded on 8 November 2018, when a transmission-tower failure sparked the Camp Fire, ultimately killing 85 people and displacing more than 50,000 residents. Bus driver Kevin McKay and teacher Mary Ludwig steered an elementary-school outing through choking smoke and walls of flame for nearly five hours, a story that Johnson has called “a reminder that climate change isn’t a distant threat—it’s right here”. Greengrass said in a statement that the film is “the story of quiet heroism—of people coming together in the face of the unthinkable”.
Principal photography wrapped earlier this year in New Mexico, whose high-desert terrain stood in for the forested Sierra foothills while employing more than 2,000 extras and nearly 500 local crew members. The supporting cast includes Yul Vazquez, Ashlie Atkinson and Spencer Watson.
Early online reaction to the teaser has highlighted Greengrass’s trademark handheld urgency and a score by frequent collaborator John Powell. Industry trackers list the project as completed, with a final release date still to be announced amid a crowded 2025 slate that features Kevin Costner’s Horizon: Chapter 2 and Alex Garland’s In the Grey.
