Emma to Star in “Paradise Hills”

Emma Roberts, Danielle Macdonald Topline ‘Paradise Hills’ (EXCLUSIVE)

VARIETY – Emma Roberts and Danielle Macdonald (“Patti Cake$”) will star in “Paradise Hills,” which is being brought onto the American Film Market by Good Universe.

Teaming U.S. and Spanish talent, “Paradise Hills” is produced by Spain’s Nostromo Pictures.

The English-language “Paradise Hills” also marks the feature debut of Spain’s Alice Waddington, whose short, “Disco Inferno,” won best director at Austin’s Fantastic Fest.

Written by cult Spanish fantasy sci-fi auteur Nacho Vigalondo (“Colossal”) and Brian DeLeeuw (“Curvature”), Waddington’s feature is set in the not-too-distant future where Uma (Roberts) wakes up one morning in Paradise Hills, a high-class treatment facility on an isolated tropical island where well-off families send their daughters to become perfect versions of themselves.

Buzz on the film, presented as a project at the Austin Fantastic Fest Market, is that it will be visually striking — hardly surprising given Waddington’s “Disco Inferno,” a black and white, stylized tribute to French horror master Georges Franju. It will also retain the strongly female and social-centric focus, in the vein of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” suggested at Austin.

“Paradise Hills” is produced by Nostromo Pictures’ Adrian Guerra and Núria Valls. Its upcoming movies include Rodrigo Cortes’ “Down a Dark Hall,” which Lionsgate will release in the U.S., and “The Kill Team,” with Alexander Skarsgard and Nat Wolff.