Two more big names have signed on for Drew Goddard’s upcoming thriller Bad Times At The El Royale, with Dakota Johnson and Russell Crowe both joining the already impressive cast. They will reportedly will play major characters in the upcoming thriller, which is due to start shooting shortly and has attracted a lot of interest.

Goddard is perhaps best known for directing and writing the cult genre film The Cabin in the Woods, though he also performed producing and writing duties for Netflix’s Daredevil , and The Defenders. He crafted the screenplay for The Martian, which earned him an Oscar nomination, and has a long history of work in shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost. Goddard is also attached to the much-anticipated X-Force movie, for which he is still onboard to write and direct, despite the current situation with 20th Century Fox being acquired by The Walt Disney Company casting a shadow over some productions.

Bad Times At The El Royale is another project which Goddard will direct from his own original screenplay. The film has already landed Jeff Bridges and Chris Hemsworth , and now (as reported by Cinema Blend and The Tracking Board) both Crowe and Johnson have also signed to play leading roles in the movie. Hemsworth in particular recently stated that he was eager to work with his The Cabin in the Woods director again, saying in an interview with Cinema Blend:

I was desperately wanting to work with him again after [Cabin in the Woods], and almost didn’t even read the script. I was like, ‘I’m in, whatever it is! Let’s go, buddy’… When something is good enough it re-inspires you, and reinvigorates you.

There is no synopsis for the film as yet, with only the vaguest of details given for the plot so far. It is reportedly set in the 1960s at a rundown motel near Lake Tahoe in California, which attracts a motely group of strangers for an unknown reason. Hemsworth describes it as a ‘noir thriller‘ and it could well be that Goddard will deal with all the expected cliché’s and tropes in the same way that he did in Cabin. The tight shooting schedule is said to run between March to April, with 20th Century Fox looking at a possible release in October of this year.

Along with those actors already named, the cast also includes Tony winner Cynthia Erivo (Chaos Walking), and rising actress Cailee Spaeny (Pacific Rim Uprising). Given the sheer quality of that cast now in place, and the standard of the previous projects that Goddard has written/directed, Bad Times At The El Royale is shaping up to be something very exciting indeed. We’ll bring you more details on the movie as we get them.