Orphan prequel First Kill to be released by Paramount

Last Updated on September 10, 2021

While Dark Castle’s 2009 movie Orphan (watch it HERE) was released by Warner Bros., the prequel Orphan: First Kill has found a home at a different studio: Paramount Players, a production label of Paramount Pictures, has picked up the domestic distribution rights to the film. Details on their release strategy have not been revealed.

Directed by William Brent Bell, Orphan: First Kill finds Isabelle Fuhrman reprising the role of Esther, the “homicidal 30-something pretending to be a 9-year-old” she played in the first film, even though she really was a child when she first played the character. Scripted by David Coggeshall, the prequel has the following synopsis:

Leena Klammer orchestrates a brilliant escape from an Estonian psychiatric facility and travels to America by impersonating the missing daughter of a wealthy family. But Leena’s new life as “Esther” comes with an unexpected wrinkle and pits her against a mother who will protect her family at any cost.

Fuhrman was made to look like a child again through “a combination of forced perspective shooting and a world-class makeup team”, and her co-star Julia Stiles has said she was “floored” by the results. Stiles told Collider,

The tricks that they did with the camera and different perspective tricks that they had, plus her costume and prosthetics and all that, she looks like a child. And her performance is stunning, because she embodies a child too in the way that she talks and the way she walks.”

Fuhrman and Stiles are joined in the cast by Rossif Sutherland, Matthew Finlan and Hiro Kanagawa.

Co-financed by eOne and Dark Castle, Orphan: First Kill was produced by James Tomlinson, with Dark Castle Entertainment’s Alex Mace, Hal Sadoff, and Ethan Erwin. Original Orphan screenwriter David Leslie Johnson served as executive producer alongside Daryl Katz, Chloe Katz, Paul Marcaccio, Victor Moyers and Kyle Irving. Kelly Gallagher and Robert Bell co-produced, with Jen Gorton and Josie Liang overseeing for eOne. Fuhrman also has an associate producer credit on the film.