Debut filmmaker R.T. Thorne is blasting onto the film scene with action-thriller “40 Acres” starring acclaimed actress Danielle Deadwyler.
Thorne directs the dystopian feature from a script he cowrote with Glenn Taylor and Lora Campbell. “40 Acres” takes place in the near future after a plague kills all animals. Deadwyler plays a former soldier who tries to protect both her family and her inherited farm land from a cannibalistic militia.
The official synopsis reads: “As famine spreads across the globe, society is at war and in ruins. But the Freemans are surviving — even thriving — on their ancestral farm so long as they dispatch the occasional raiding party. But what good is surviving the end of the world if it means snuffing out your own humanity? Former soldier Hailey (Deadwyler) made that choice years ago, believing that isolation was the only way to protect her family. She and her partner Galen (Michael Greyeyes) fled the collapse along with their children, fenced them off from the world, and trained them to fight (and, yes, kill). But now Hailey’s eldest Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor) is a young man, and when he meets a young woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) in the forest beyond the fence, his need for human contact could place the whole family in jeopardy.”
The feature premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival after completing filming with an interim agreement from SAG-AFTRA during the strikes. Deadwyler previously starred in “Till” and “The Piano Lesson,” as well as “Carry On,” recent horror film “The Woman in the Yard,” and “The Color Purple.” She also led post-apocalyptic mini-series “Station Eleven.”
Next, Deadwyler will portray Zelma Redding in biopic “Otis and Zelma,” based on the biography of musician Otis Redding. Deadwyler told IndieWire in 2024 that navigating fame has a “certain level of anxiety” for her, especially after the awards push for “Till.”
“You’re coming into a space where you have to be public-facing quite often. I’m a ‘be quiet and do the work’ person,” she said. “I’m happy on any kind of production, whether it’s me in the studio working on performance art or visual art or commercial film and TV. I truly understand and value and appreciate the conversations that come from promo tours, that it is an encouragement and an opening up of the work, an invitation to have dialogue. And so I eventually settled into it.”
“40 Acres” premieres in theaters July 2 from Magnolia Pictures. Check out the trailer below.
