Just a year ago, Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail was encouraging us all to Leave The World Behind with his eponymous noodle-twisting, apocalyptic Netflix thriller. Clearly however, Esmail forgot to make a very specific exemption to that directive — it should’ve been Leave The World Behind (But Not Julia Roberts). “How so?” We hear you cry. Well because, per Deadline‘s reporting, the LTWB leading lady is teaming up with Esmail once again on new Warner Bros. thriller Panic Carefully. And, what’s more, he’s only gone and gotten the Scarlet Witch herself, Elizabeth Olsen, to come along for the ride too.
Set to be directed by Esmail from a self-penned script, plot specifics for Panic Carefully remain hush-hush for the time being. However, according to Deadline, the expectation is that the film will be a Mr. Robot style paranoid thriller, with Jonathan Demme’s classic The Silence Of The Lambs also serving as a tonal reference point. And while that admittedly isn’t a hell of a lot to work with at this point, the fact that the project sparked a heated bidding war earlier this year — a bidding war won on the promise of a theatrical release no less — suggests that Warner Bros. are confident they’ve got something that belongs on the big screen on their hands.
For Roberts, Panic Carefully joins Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt as a second buzzy thriller in the Oscar winner’s pipeline, while for Olsen — who we most recently saw in Azazel Jacobs’ tender Netflix drama His Three Daughters — the project will represent another change of pace for the actor in her post-MCU — or at least seemingly post-MCU (you just never can tell with Kevin Feige and co) — career. For us, seeing these names beneath a title as confrontingly oxymoronic as Panic Carefully is enough to have us sold, sight unseen. And until we hear more, remember: don’t panic — panic carefully.