Twisters star Daisy Edgar-Jones and CODA star Emilia Jones will topline a period revenge thriller currently titled Bad Bridgets, which is serving as the follow-up feature for Rich Peppiatt, the rising director behind British hit Kneecap.
FilmNation will be handling international sales, and WME Independent is on for domestic sales for the title, which will be officially introduced at November’s American Film Market.
LuckyChap and Coup d’Etat, the latter being Peppiatt’s production banner, are producing. The project is far enough along that is has Oscar winning production designer James Price (Poor Things) and costume designer Kate Hawley (Crimson Peak) on board. The producers are eyeing a shoot in Northern Ireland and Ireland in spring 2026.
The script was inspired by the book Bad Bridget: Crime, Mayhem, and the Lives of Irish Emigrant Women by Elaine Farrell and Leanne McCormick and has been developed with the support of Belfast’s Queens University.
The book looked at the world of Bad Bridgets, a swath of Irish women emigrants that were deemed troublemakers, noting that for a time Irish women outnumbered Irish men in prison (it didn’t help that some of the women locked up were in there for “stubbornness.”)
Per the producers, the script’s story begins when a mysterious letter sets a young woman on a perilous journey from famine-ravaged Ireland to 19th century New York, where she joins the ranks of Irish Bridgets creating mayhem in the city.
Peppiatt’s Kneecap became the most nominated debut in BAFTA history, while also claiming seven British Independent Film Awards, five IFTAs and breakthrough British/Irish filmmaker at the London Critics Circle. He is repped by WME, Anonymous Content and MMB Creative.
Daisy Edgar Jones is repped by UTA, B-Side Management, and Sloane Offer.
Emilia Jones is repped by CAA, Brillstein Entertainment Partners and UK’s Artist Rights Group.
David Jonsson is beaming with pride as he sits down to talk to The Hollywood Reporter.
It’s late August and the in-demand British actor has come to a local school in rural England to counsel the next generation of film creatives. He’s teamed up with BAFTA and EE for a new initiative, Set the Stage, where 16 teens have been selected to form a crew and produce a short film under the mentorship of Daisy Edgar-Jones and Jonsson, 2025’s recipient of BAFTA’s EE Rising Star Award.
“I’m relatively quite shy,” the Rye Lane and Alien: Romulus star says to THR. “I feel like I don’t really have anything of use to say most of the time. But it’s just not true. And I think Set the Stage and their initiative with BAFTA and EE, it’s just so pivotal in getting the opportunities that I got as a kid that really helped me go: ‘Oh man, I can do this.’”
It’s this experience that made it a no-brainer when Jonsson was asked to get involved with Set the Stage. The hand-picked group of 17-year-olds are on site attending a seven-day immersive programme where they were joined by Jonson and Twisters actress Edgar‑Jones. The actors led Q&As and on‑set workshops with the aim of igniting confidence, creativity and collaboration before the teenagers took to set themselves to produce their project Setting Sail.
The movie explores the theme “growing up as a teenager in Britain today” and follows the main character, Hannah, and her younger self, Peanut, on a nostalgic treasure hunt that rekindles memories of her late grandfather. Featuring a cast that includes House of Dragons actress, Carol Ball, Setting Sail will premiere in early 2026 and be made available to watch on EE’s YouTube channel.
David Jonsson talks with young filmmakers about the craft and wider industry for BAFTA and EE’s ‘Set the Stage’.
EE/BAFTA
“I think staying playful is everything,” continues Jonsson, who also leads the forthcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s The Long Walk. “It helps you to just continue to understand what you really enjoy. Life is short, art is long. With art, you want to continue to find what feels right to you, because the truth is you make a handful of them that really, really matter. If you’re too rigid, you’re limiting that.” His biggest advice for the kids: “Remain playful and be passionate. Find craft.”
His mission with Set the Stage is about “actively finding” opportunities for new voices in the film industry. “I’m a working class lad. I got excluded from school several times and I found my way into film in a way that feels like I shouldn’t have,” says Jonsson, “which is partially why I feel grateful to be in these rooms and doing what I’m doing. We can’t expect them to make it to the table, because odds are there’s not enough seats.”
It was advice from his mother, he continues, that motivates his work with aspiring creatives. “There’s something about being vivacious in your belief and holding to it. My mum always used to say, ‘Don’t wait to be told. Go and do it.’ So from both sides, if we can find some form of synergy there, the industry will be way better for it. And I’m all for that. I think Set the Stage is doing that.”
His newly-founded production outfit with producing partner Sophia Gibber, greyarea, is about finding emerging talent and encouraging them to push the boundaries. “We just produced a play up in Edinburgh — [greyarea] is a film company but we had a story that I wrote that felt like it could work on a stage, and I wanted to workshop it and try it and play with it,” he explains. “It doesn’t matter really what discipline you’re in, I think storytelling is storytelling. You can be an actor one day, and then you can be the perfect producer. That’s what making movies is. You mustn’t ever get too set in your ways.”
Daisy Edgar-Jones for EE and BAFTA’s ‘Set the Stage’ initiative.
EE/BAFTA
London-born Jonsson still can’t quite believe he’s a BAFTA Award winner, let alone asked to usher in the next batch of filmmakers. “I grew up watching the BAFTAs,” he says. “My parents [and I would] sit down on Sunday night and we’d get Chinese and watch these glamorous people in dresses [at the BAFTAs]. It’s partially because my dad loved film and partially because my mum just wanted to watch glamorous people be glamorous,” he recalls.
“For me, it was escapism. It was everything that I saw and loved in movies, watching these actors be celebrated for doing what they love… I don’t think there’s any better job. To be where I am now, winning the Rising Star Award — which is really all about the people — and BAFTA championing me in that way, I am humbled.”
Pic takes place in the 1950s, where married Muriel and her brother in law Julius embark on separate but parallel straight life paths, only to discover their closeted desires bubbling to the surface. On Swift Horses is scripted by Bruce Kass and produced by Peter Spears, Theresa Page and Christine Vachon produced it.
UTA Independent Film Group is brokering the North American deal with SPC, and Black Bear International is handling the international territories.
Kiss or no kiss, Glen Powell is just happy fans care enough about Twistersto start discourse online.
In an interview with Screenrant, the actor, who stars opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in the sequel to 1996’s Twister, recently shared his reaction to the surprising uproar over a kiss between the two leads being omitted from the film.
“I’m taking it very personally!” he said. “I’m sure you’ve seen the behind-the-scenes, where I did get to kiss Daisy Edgar-Jones, which really is all that counts. [Laughs] We had a great time, and I’m really proud of the movie.”
Throughout the movie, romantic tension builds between Powell’s Tyler, a hotshot storm chaser, and Edgar-Jones’ Kate, a retired tornado-chaser, as they team up to take on a massive tornado. However, an on-screen kiss never made it into the final cut, and footage only later emerged on social media of the two stars filming an alternate ending where they do kiss (leaving some fans disappointed).
“I really think that even that [backlash] shows that people care, which is really great,” Powell added. “I just love how excited people have gotten about that movie, and Daisy and I send each other the TikToks and the gifs. There’s so much funny stuff coming out of it. It’s fun. That’s what summer movies are about. It creates this conversation and cultural moment, and people dress up and do the thing. It’s been really awesome. So, kiss or no kiss, everybody’s a winner.”
“I actually tried the kiss, and it was very polarizing — and it’s not because of their performance of the kiss,” the filmmaker said. “This [no-kiss shot] was the other option that I had filmed on the day, and I got to say, I like it better. I think it’s a better ending. And I think that people who want a kiss within it, they can probably assume that these guys will kiss someday. And maybe we can give them privacy for that.”
He continued at the time, “In a way, this ending is a means to make sure that we really wrap things up with it in a celebratory, good way. If it ends on the kiss, then it makes it seem as though that’s what Kate’s journey was all about, to end up with a kiss. But instead, it’s better that it ends with her being able to continue doing what she’s doing with a smile on her face.”
Edgar-Jones has also described the ending that made the final cut as “nice and refreshing.”
My name is Lee Isaac Chung and I am the director of “Twisters.” So this is a scene that happens about halfway through the film. Internally, we would always say this is T4, tornado number four, because we number each of our tornadoes. And Kate is played by Daisy Edgar-Jones. And then we have Tyler played by Glen Powell. Other interesting actors in this sequence, we have James Paxton, who is actually the son of Bill Paxton. You only see him very briefly. He’s the man in the couple who try to drive away from this tornado. No! Stop! And Lily Smith, who is the daughter of our writer Mark L. Smith. And then we have Samantha Ireland, Aila Grey, who’s the little girl. And we also had Jeff Swearingen, who plays the hapless desk clerk. I really wanted to film a night tornado because growing up around tornado alley, the night tornadoes were always the most frightening. Really, the intent of doing this was to create that feeling, that subjective feeling of what it’s like to experience a tornado in real time. We had Scott Fisher, who was our special effects person, who rigged a lot of interesting things to happen within this scene after we saw that Coke machine fall and I saw that top shell loose. We rigged that top shell to fly off into the wind. Jeff Swearingen was game to be rigged up, to be pulled back to the back of the pool. And then after he’s yanked back, that’s where we changed Jeff out with this wonderful stunt performer who we rigged up to really be pulled up into the air. I think he went up about 60 feet. And then this trailer, we slammed it against the edge of the pool. We had lots of debris falling as a result. And this was a little bit scary to film because when that trailer falls on these actors, it’s loud, it’s very loud. And I felt the actors were really great sports doing this. We were keeping them safe, of course, Because we were filming a sequence in which the background is intact, and then later when they come out of this swimming pool, everything is destroyed, we needed to destroy the set. So any time we’re filming inside of this swimming pool, there were people outside, our crew, who were destroying the set. So that was going on in the same time that we were filming all of this stuff within the pool. The swimming pool had actually never been there. We had found this motel in which there were three separate structures within the motel. And what we did was we built out the hotel into a horseshoe shape and built an office so that later we could destroy those parts of our set to make it feel like a tornado really ripped through a horseshoe motel. When we were walking out with these guys, with the crane, this was really a beautiful shot. I give so much credit to Geoff Haley, our incredible camera operator, for all of the technical expertise he did in this entire sequence to make sure our camera is level and that all of these moments somehow work in this seamless way.
The BAFTAs red carpet has begun. BAFTA via Getty Images
Awards season is in full swing, and after a flurry of ceremonies in Los Angeles, it’s time to head across the pond. Tonight (Feb. 18), the British Academy of Film and Television Arts will host their annual Film Awards, celebrating the best in cinema. Oppenheimer received the most BAFTA nominations (a staggering 13), with Poor Things coming in second (11 nods).
David Tennant is hosting the 2024 BAFTAs ceremony, held at Royal Festival Hall in London’s Southbank Centre. It’s always an exciting night, as A-listers flock to the British capital to fête the best and brightest in the film industry. The star-studded red carpet never fails to impress, as attendees go all out for the glamorous evening. Below, see all the most exciting moments from the 2024 BAFTAs red carpet,
Glen Powell has been on the acting scene for a while now, but after his recent breakout in Top Gun: Maverick, he’s been cast in Twisters, the long-in-development sequel to the ’90s blockbuster Twister starring Helen Hunt and the late Bill Paxton.We’re not entirely sure exactly what Powell’s role is going to look like, but we do know that he’s going to be starring opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones. The script for the new film is written by Mark L. Smith, and it’s going to be directed by Minari’s Lee Isaac Chung.
The movie is also a co-production between Steven Spielberg’s Amblin and Universal Pictures. There have been plans for a follow-up to the original for a long time. At first, a direct sequel was in the works that would have starred new characters along with Helen Hunt’s Dr. Jo Harding. For whatever reason, the studio abandoned that approach and eventually decided to instead focus entirely on new characters. Spielberg also produced the original Twister in 1996, which was directed by Jan de Bont and went on to become the #2 biggest movie of the year, behind only the original Independence Day.
Glen Powell got his first big acting role in Spy Kids 3D: Game Over. As the years went on, he found himself cast in bigger and bigger projects. Eventually, he got his most prominent role yet last year, playing the scene stealing Lieutenant Jake “Hangman” Seresin in the mega-blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick. Given the layout of the first Twister movie, it’s very likely that he ends up playing a love interest for Daisy Edgar-Jones’ character. She’s rumored to be the child of Dr. Jo Harding and Bill Harding (Bill Paxton’s character) from the first movie.
It’ll be a little while before we see really anything out of production. Principal photography is starting in May of this year, and the film is set to be released on July 19, 2024.
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