Dakota Johnson will lead Trudy Blue, a near-future sci-fi action feature now launching to buyers at the American Film Market in Santa Monica. Market materials describe the film as centering on an outlawed android maid who wakes in a landfill 2,000 miles from home and undertakes a cross-country quest to return to where she belongs. Angus MacLane is attached to direct from a screenplay by Evan Twohy. Early sales notes position the project as a grounded, character-driven take on genre terrain, with world building in service of a survival narrative rather than spectacle.
Packaging indicates Johnson will produce alongside Alex Saks of Saks Picture Company with TeaTime Pictures also involved, a combination aligned with recent independent financing models that pair star-driven vehicles with agile producers. The project’s AFM timing places it among titles seeking presales and partnerships before a 2026 production window becomes crowded, as buyers weigh theatrical potential for mid-budget sci-fi against streaming-first demand.
Trudy Blue adds to a busy year for Johnson, who headlined Celine Song’s Materialists over the summer, toplined the fall romantic comedy Splitsville, and set her first feature as a director with A Tree Is Blue, now in sales. She also stars in the upcoming adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s Verity, scheduled for 2026. The activity underscores her recent pivot toward projects where she carries both creative and commercial weight, spanning indie romance, studio-backed drama, and high-concept genre.
MacLane’s move into live-action aligns with a broader migration of animation veterans into performance-led storytelling. Known for work across Pixar titles before directing a major 2022 release, he brings a background in precise visual grammar and action clarity that could mesh with the script’s journey structure and practical world-building ambitions described in the brief. For buyers at AFM, the draw is a star-driven concept with a clean hook, a director with large-scale craft experience, and a premise calibrated for international audiences that favor contained sci-fi with emotional stakes.
