Mar 22, 2023
Destry Allyn Spielberg’s Directing Debut Will Be ‘Please Don’t Feed The Children’; ‘Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery Starring
Michelle Dockery is set to star in Destry Allyn Spielberg’s directorial debut, Please Don’t Feed the Children. The elevated genre feature film will begin production late April in New Mexico. Scripted by Paul Bertino, the psychological thriller is produced by Jason Dubin and his Perry Street Films, Josh Kesselman and Michael Hagerty.
In Please Don’t Feed the Children, after a viral outbreak ravaged the country’s adult population, a group of orphans heads south in search of a new life, only to find themselves at the mercy of a deranged woman harboring a dangerous secret.
Spielberg, daughter of The Fabelmans helmer, will do this film before the one on which she originally expected to make her feature debut, Four Assassins (and a Funeral). The latter, a Kingsman-meets-Knives Out meets-Succession-style script by Ryan Hooper that made the 2021 Black List, will percolate a bit longer but is still in the works from Basil Iwanyk & Erica Lee’s Thunder Road Pictures. The pic will just move back as the other one was ready to go.
Spielberg won Best Thriller at City of Angels Women’s Film Festival in 2022 for her short film, Let Me Go the Right Way. She co-wrote the screenplay with Owen King, and it premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, with Hopper Penn and Brian D’Arcy James starring. Her work as an actress includes Licorice Pizza and an episode of the miniseries I Know This Much Is True.
Said Spielberg: “I am so grateful to have the opportunity to bring this story to the screen with such a collaborative and inspirational team. This picture is so much more than just a horror film. It’s a dream come true to work with a talent such as Michelle Dockery. I am excited to the genre with our incredible cast and crew.”
Dockery is Emmy nominated for playing Lady Mary on Downton Abbey and its two film spinoffs. She also was Emmy-nommed for the Scott Frank-created limited series Godless and co-starred in the Guy Ritchie-directed The Gentlemen and opposite Chris Evans in the Morten Tyldum-directed Apple TV+ limited series Defending Jacob and the SJ Clarkson-directed limited Netflix series Anatomy of a Scandal. She just wrapped Stephen Knight’s six-part limited series This Town.
Dockery is represented by WME, Anonymous Content, Hamilton Hodell and Johnson Shapiro Slewett; Spielberg is repped by WME, Sugar 23 and Gang Tyre.