Alex Wolff and Imogen Poots have been tapped to lead writer/director Joey Klein’s crime drama “Castle in the Ground“, which is being produced by William Woods via his Woods Entertainment banner and Michael Solomon of Band With Pictures. Production is currently underway in Sudbury, Canada.

The plot follows a teenager Henry who, after the untimely death of his mother, befriends his charismatic but troubled next-door neighbor Ana, who embroils Henry in a world of addiction and violence just as the opioid epidemic takes hold of their small town.

Andra Gordon of American Entertainment Investors, who developed the project with Woods and Solomon, will serve as executive producer alongside Tom Spriggs, Rob McGillivray, Ben Stranahan, George Stranahan, John Hansen, Mark Gingras, and John Laing. The pic marks the first project for from financing company Line 200, who financed the film along with Ontario Creates, NOHFC, and Telefilm.

The post-apocalyptic action-horror is the first English-language film from Japanese auteur Sion Sono. Imogen Poots has joined Nicolas Cage in Japanese auteur Sion Sono’s first English-language feature, the post-apocalyptic action-horror film Prisoners of the Ghostland, which XYZ is shopping in Berlin. Patriot Pictures and Union Patriot Capital Management have also boarded the project, written by Aaron Hendry and Reza Sixo Safai, to produce and fully finance. Described ­by Cage himself as possibly his “wildest movie” ever — and this after his insane blood-soaked psychedelic 2018 hit Mandy — Prisoners of the Ghostland is billed as an “East meets West vortex of beauty and violence.”

When a notorious criminal, Hero (Cage), is sent to rescue an abducted girl (Poots) who has disappeared into a dark supernatural universe, they must break the evil curse that binds them and escape the mysterious revenants that rule the Ghostland.

The film — slated to start shooting this spring — is being produced by Laura Rister for Untitled Entertainment; Michael Mendelsohn for Patriot Pictures/UPCM; Ko Mori for Eleven Arts; Reza Sixo Safai of Black Light District Entertainment; and Nate Bolotin for XYZ Films.

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Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg are set to star in Vivarium, a sci-fi thriller from Without Name helmer Lorcan Finnegan. XYZ Films is exec producing and handling world sales which kick off in Cannes next week. Production starts in Ireland in July. This marks Poots’ and Eisengerg’s third collaboration after 2009’s Solitary Man and upcoming film “The Art of Self Defense”.

Poots will play a young woman who, along with her fiancé (Eisenberg), is in search of the perfect starter home. After following a mysterious real estate agent to a new housing development, the couple becomes trapped in a maze of identical houses and forced to raise an otherworldly child.

Poots recently starred in Jamie Dagg’s Sweet Virginia and Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room. She’ll next be seen in The Art of Self-Defense which also stars Eisenberg and Alessandro Nivola. She’s repped by CAA, Troika, and Morris Yorn.

Oscar nominee Eisenberg will next star in Resistance, which shoots later this year. He’s also got Kim Nguyen’s The Hummingbird Project in post. Eisenberg is repped by CAA and Felker Toczek Suddleson Abramson.

Finnegan’s debut feature Without Name, an ecological horror-thriller, premiered in Toronto in 2016. XYZ also handled North American sales on that film.

XYZ’s Cannes slate includes survival thriller Titan, Midnight Screening Arctic and Mandy in Directors’ Fortnight.

Fantastic Films’ Brendan McCarthy and John McDonnell will produce in co-production with Belgium’s Frakas Productions and Denmark’s PingPong Film. Vivarium also gets additional support from the Irish Film Board, Wallimage, the Danish Film Institute and Eurimages. It was developed with the support of the Creative Europe Media Programme of the European Union, Film4 and Frontières.