Nearly three years have passed since it was first announced that Abbey Lee (Old) and Christopher Abbott (Possessor) had signed on to star in the Australian Outback thriller Fear Is the Rider, which is coming to us from John Michael McDonagh, the BAFTA-nominated writer/director of the 2011 film The Guard… and while the project has lost Abbott in that time, it’s still alive, and Abbey Lee is still attached to star in it. Deadline reports that Lee has now been joined in the cast by Ben Mendelsohn (Star Wars: Rogue One), Toby Wallace (The Bikeriders), and Eliza Scanlen (Babyteeth). Film Constellation and CAA Media Finance will be seeking distribution deals at this week’s American Film Market.
McDonagh’s plan is to make a trilogy of Fear Is the Rider thrillers – and if you look at the synopses provided, you’ll see that the current version of the film is much different from the one that was announced in early 2022. The film will follow a lone woman, searching for her missing mother, who is pursued into the Australian Outback by a terrifying family of serial killers, with only an ex-con and a young girl willing to help her. When the project was first announced, this was the synopsis: John Shaw, a photojournalist, arrives in Australia trying to recover from his experiences reporting on the Vietnam War. After meeting a young woman in a small-town bar, he decides to detour into the Outback to photograph cave paintings. Out there, under the baking sun, people can die within hours. But the elements are not the most hazardous thing in the bush, and Shaw and his mysterious companion soon find themselves caught up in an unrelenting fight for survival.
The differences in these descriptions aren’t due to the script evolving over the years. It’s because the Fear Is the Rider that was announced in 2022 is now intended to be the second installment in this trilogy and will sport the title Fear Is the Rider: Australia Day. That sequel will be based on a novel written by Wake in Fright author Kenneth Cook, and that’s where the title Fear Is the Rider came from.
The Fear Is the Rider that McDonagh will be making first is actually based on the novel The Hunted by Gabriel Bergmoser – and that book has a sequel called The Inheritance, so I wonder if McDonagh is going to work that one into the trilogy as well. Whatever the case, Fear Is the Rider also stars Daniel Henshall (Mickey 17), Brenton Thwaites (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales), Thomas Turgoose (This is England), Rhys Wakefield (The Purge), Shane Jacobson (The Bourne Legacy), Susie Porter (Gold), and Jacqui Purvis (Home and Away). Deadline adds that the project is meant to be “a nod to the gore-drenched Ozploitation slashers of the 1970s.” Which sounds great to me.
As for the follow-up, Fear Is the Rider: Australia Day, that was said to be a “chase thriller” that’s like “Duel meets Picnic at Hanging Rock.“
The first Fear Is the Rider is being produced by McDonagh and Elizabeth Eves for House of Un-American Activities, Trevor Matthews and Nick Gordon for Brookstreet Pictures, and Kate Glover. Filming is expected to begin in Australia in early 2025.
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