Jason Segel, Lily Collins, and Jesse Plemons thriller acquired by Netflix

According to Deadline, Jason Segel, Lily Collins, and Jesse Plemons are starring in Windfall, a “Hitchcockian thriller” and a “modern-day noir” directed by The One I Love and The Discovery director Charlie McDowell and has just been acquired by Netflix. Deadline says the movie (which wrapped production earlier this year and was developed by McDowell and Segel) is about a young couple who arrive at a vacation home just as its being robbed. If we had to guess, we’d say Segel and Collins are playing the couple and Plemons is playing the robber, if only because “you think you’re doing one thing but then Jesse Plemons is there unexpectedly” would be one good explanation for how he manages to be in every single movie these days. This was just going to be a regular movie about a couple on vacation, but then Jesse Plemons was already there, so they found a way to work him into the script. The trick is that he’s good, so nobody’s going to object to him just showing up on every set and pretending that he’s supposed to be there.

Plemonsness aside, the other story with Windfall is that Netflix apparently scooped up the rights in a “major eight-figure dollar deal.” McDowell is a fairly buzzy director, even if he’s only made those two movies (a third, Gilded Rage, is in pre-production), and it certainly doesn’t hurt that he’s the son of Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen. TV-wise, he has worked on Silicon Valley, Legion, Tales From The Loop, Dispatches From Elsewhere, and the unfortunately COVID-canceled On Becoming A God In Central Florida—which starred Kirsten Dunst, who is in a relationship with Plemons, so maybe that’s how they know each other and it’s not because Jesse Plemons is some kind Hollywood trickster who just shows up on film sets. They just won’t let us have any fun, huh? There’s always some kind of rational explanation.