Last year, director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Demonic) was set to helm the alien abduction horror film They Found Us, starring Joel Kinnaman (The Suicide Squad). However, Deadline reports that both Blomkamp and Kinnaman have departed the project, with Julius Avery (The Pope’s Exorcist, Overlord) now taking over as director.

With Kinnaman no longer attached, casting is currently underway as production is set to begin in Australia in the first half of 2025.

They Found Us follows a father and daughter on a camping trip in the Utah wilderness to repair their fractured relationship. When they’re attacked by a hostile extraterrestrial lifeform, their lives—and their bond—are put to the test as they fight a humanoid creature to prevent their abduction to a mysterious alien world.

Temple Hill Entertainment (Smile) is producing the reworked film, which will now be filmed in Australia instead of its original shooting location in Saudi Arabia’s Neom region. The movie is based on an original screenplay by Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight), and produced by Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen of Temple Hill. Ford will serve as an executive producer, alongside Temple Hill’s John Fischer.

Wyck Godfrey previously described the film as a blend of “otherworldly horror and breathless suspense,” but emphasized that at its core, They Found Us is “an emotional story of a father and teenage daughter grappling with their differences and working through their estrangement.”

With major changes to the project, more updates will be forthcoming as the film develops.