It’s been almost a year since Melissa Barrera was unceremoniously dropped from the Scream franchise for sharing her thoughts on the Israel-Hamas war on social media, but her career hasn’t slowed down in the slightest. Her most recent release, Your Monster, has been a critical hit, and now she’s set to take on the Old West in the new thriller In the Cradle of Granite, which marks the English-language debut of director Ariel Escalante.
Per Deadline, Barerra is set to star in the Western thriller from Escalante (Domingo and the Mist), which has a whole host of producers attached to it, including Joel David Moore, Rishi Bajaj and Daniel Taborga of Balcony 9 Productions, Gregory Thomas, and Jonathan Sadowski and Daniel Pancotto of Ad Lunam Entertainment. Set in the late 1800s, Barrera will play a young widow who wants to do right by her family, only to find herself in cahoots with a bounty hunter in the hopes of providing a better life for her and her children. Check out the full synopsis for In the Cradle of Granite below.
“In the Cradle of Granite is set in the brutal American west of the late 1800s, where a young mother (Barrera) struggles to provide for her family after her husband dies and the local town folk won’t do business with her. But when she finds the body of a notorious wanted outlaw on her homestead, she strikes a deal with the bounty hunter who killed him — setting out across the dangerous frontier in hopes of a big reward and a better future.”
Related
Melissa Barrera Is ‘Here to Stay’ & ‘Proud’ of Finishing Abigail while Dealing with Scream Firing
Abigail’s Melissa Barrera proclaims that she is “here to stay” despite her controversial dismissal from the Scream film series.
Barrera recently spoke to Deadline about her new project, calling the script by Jay Holmes “thrilling and hypnotizing,” while at the same time revealing that she didn’t just choose In the Cradle of Granite haphazardly, but rather came to the film with a purpose in mind.
“Ariel is a beautifully poetic filmmaker and I am honored to join him in his English language debut. We are both very intentional in the narratives we choose to tell and seek to entertain while giving life to characters and situations that serve as a mirror for society. Jay Holmes’ script is thrilling and hypnotizing and I can’t wait to bring it to the big screen along with the teams at Ad Lunam and Balcony 9.”
Melissa Barrera Teams with James Wan for Sci-Fi Espionage Thriller
Aside from In the Cradle of Granite and the aforementioned Your Monster, Barrera also took part in one of the year’s hottest horror movies, Abigail. The hit from Universal Studios put a balletic spin on classic vampire tropes to deliver a slick and stylish bloodbath that was helmed by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who had previously directed her in 2022’s Scream and its sequel, Scream VI.
Before she saddles up her horses for a trip to the frontier, though, Barrera is currently in the midst of filming the new series Copenhagen alongside Simu Liu, which is executive produced by another horror aficiando, James Wan. Created by Thomas Brandon, the sci-fi espionage thriller centers around an intelligence agent in the near future who gets hacked, and must work to prove his allegiance. The series was picked up by Peacock earlier this year, and is currently filming in Toronto. Things are expected to wrap in March 2025, so it’ll still be a while before it debuts.
In addition to all that, Barrera is also set to appear in The Collaboration, a biographical pic that delves deep into the relationship between artists Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1980s New York. The film is currently in post-production, and no release date has been set. Still, it’s nice to see that, following her Scream departure, Barrera shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, she’s the busiest she’s ever been, and we can’t wait to see more from her in the future.
- Release Date
- April 19, 2024
- Main Genre
- Horror