Jennifer Lawrence will star in “The Flood,” Zach Cregger’s original sci-fi thriller for Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, the studio confirmed Tuesday.
The Oscar winner joins a project the filmmaker wrote himself and will direct and produce from his own idea. It opens in theaters Aug. 11, 2028. Plot details remain sealed, though reports say filming begins in Europe in early 2027.
Cregger’s rise makes the casting a notable win. He moved from sketch comedy into horror with 2022’s “Barbarian,” then scored a $270 million global hit with New Line’s “Weapons” in 2025. His “Resident Evil” adaptation opened this month to strong box office. “The Flood” reunites him with the “Weapons” team, including producers Roy Lee and Miri Yoon of Vertigo Entertainment. Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment co-produces.
The path to Warner Bros. took a turn. New Line took the film out of turnaround from Netflix earlier this year, and reports say talks with the streamer stalled when Cregger insisted on a theatrical release. “Jennifer is one of a kind,” Cregger said in a statement. Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy called Lawrence one of the most gifted actors working and described the film as an ambitious original.
Little is confirmed about the story. Genre outlets report a deep-space setting in which a ship’s captain and crew answer a mysterious signal and find an alien artifact that bends time, reality and sanity. Cregger has offered guidance on the tone. He told Men’s Health that Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” served as a north star, calling that film “a really thrilling horror movie about human nature,” and has said his project asks big questions.
Lawrence brings recent momentum. She won the Best Actress Oscar for “Silver Linings Playbook” and earned a Golden Globe nomination for “Die My Love.” She returns as Katniss Everdeen in “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping” and stars opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s “What Happens at Night.”
Cregger’s calendar is filling. Warner Bros. has scheduled “Gladys” for September 2028, a month after “The Flood.” He is expected to write that film but not direct it.
