The director and star of 2023’s Leave The World Behind – Sam Esmail and Julia Roberts – are reuniting for Panic Carefully.
Films that release straight to streaming can sometimes have a hard time when it comes to making a splash in the cultural conversation. One film that stylishly sidestepped that pitfall, however, was Leave The World Behind, the Sam Esmail-directed thriller that dropped at the tail-end of last year on Netflix.
The combination of a wonderful ensemble led by Julia Roberts, a nail-biting narrative and a sudden swerve of an ending meant that Leave The World Behind was a hot topic of conversation online. We’d bet the same was probably true offline too, as people went back to work after their Christmas hols and chatted with friends and colleagues about the movies they’d seen over the break.
Avoiding the plummet into streaming obscurity is no mean feat for any film, and the success of Leave The World Behind hasn’t gone unnoticed. According to Hollywood reporter Jeff Sneider (via World of Reel), it looks like Esmail and Roberts are teaming up again… and there’s no shortage of studios lining up to back the project.
Read more: Leave The World Behind | Why the sitcom Friends might hold the key to its ambiguous ending
The duo are reuniting for Panic Carefully, a mystery project that is said to have attracted the interest of Netflix, Paramount and Warner Bros. Next to nothing is known about the project itself, beyond that rather oxymoronic title (which is also a pretty celebrated meme that highlights how easily meaning can be lost in translation).
Of course, Netflix has an existing relationship with Esmail and Roberts given that the Silicon Valley studio backed Leave The World Behind. However, the lure of a theatrical release might sway Esmail to look towards Paramount or Warner Bros, with the latter securing a host of talented creatives to its banner of late.
If you haven’t checked it out already, you can read our take on of Leave The World Behind's conversation-provoking ending here. As for Panic Carefully, we’ll let you know more as and when we hear something.
