After her standout turn as Robin Buckley in the third season of Stranger Things, Maya Hawke has the industry and fans expecting big things, and while she hasn't exactly been picking up projects left and right in the last year, she has now signed on for an exciting new project that will add to her resume of Netflix exclusives.
According to Deadline, Hawke is now set to team up with Riverdale’s Camila Mendes for Strangers – a film that is essentially a remake of Patricia Highsmith's Strangers On A Train (previously made into an iconic movie by Alfred Hitchcock) that is getting a revamp with teenage protagonists. It's not totally clear just how dark the feature will get, but the plot is described as being about two young women named Drew and Eleanor who meet up randomly and make a deal that will see them work to try to take down the other's bullies.
Newcomer Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, who wrote and directed the 2019 Netflix feature Someone Great as her feature debut, is set to helm the project and has penned the script with TV writer Celeste Ballard. There are no current details available for when the film will begin production.
The daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke most recently appeared on an episode of her father's showtime series The Good Lord Bird, and plays one of the leads in writer/director Gia Coppola's dramedy Mainstream – which had its world premiere this fall at the Venice Film Festival. She is set to reprise her aforementioned role as Robin Buckley in the fourth and final season of Stranger Things, which remains in production due to COVID-19-related delays, and it's now expected to launch on Netflix sometime in 2021.
As for Camila Mendes, she has the fifth season of Riverdale set to start up in January of next year, and this past year played a supporting role in the hit Hulu comedy Palm Springs, starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti.
It will be interesting to see what direction Strangers winds up going with its story, as the core premise has become a kind of pop culture staple – with Strangers On A Train not only inspiring a variety of feature adaptations (such as 1987's Throw Momma from the Train), but also storylines in various television shows. Hopefully the new take will recognize how familiar the formula has become, and use those expectations to throw curveballs that nobody expects.
Strangers doesn't presently have a release date, as Netflix doesn't typically reveal those until just a few weeks before a project is set to launch, but stay tuned for more updates on the production (it wouldn't be too surprising to see the production aim for some notable talent to play the story's antagonists).
