FilmNation Entertainment is taking the Boston-set 911 dispatch thriller State of Emergency to AFM through its genre label Infrared Pictures. Brittany O’Grady is attached to star, and Greg Yaitanes will direct. Sam Brown and Dustin Thomason are producing via Curiosity Media, with Infrared financing. The film is expected to start shooting next year.
A contained thriller with a clear escalation
Nick Luddington wrote the script. It follows Jenna, a Boston 911 emergency dispatcher still haunted by the death of her teenage brother and the missed call he made to her in his final moments. An overnight shift turns when callers report strange incidents tied to something in Boston Harbor, and the threat eventually closes in on the dispatch center itself.
Why the attachment matters
Yaitanes arrives with data points that film buyers understand. He directed the House of the Dragon season finale that drew HBO’s largest global audience ever. He was an executive producer and director on Apple TV+’s most viewed drama, Presumed Innocent, and previously won an Emmy for House. That is a proven record of turning genre and prestige stories into audience scale.
O’Grady’s recent slate strengthens the package differently. She comes off The White Lotus, Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite and the genre title Monitor, with Jumanji: Open World ahead. The mix spans streaming recognition, auteur film work and broader commercial appeal.
The sales argument in three points
- Proven audience spikes: The House of the Dragon finale and Presumed Innocent give buyers a viewership reference, not just a name.
- Cross-genre star power: O’Grady brings streaming, thriller and franchise credits in one package.
- Contained concept: A 911 dispatch center under siege is a high-stakes, location-driven premise that suits independent financing.
AFM will test the pitch before the footage
Because cameras do not start until next year, distributors are underwriting the attachments and the logline rather than a finished film. For independent sellers, a package with a peak-TV director attached can reduce perceived risk at the pre-sale stage: the director’s streaming record becomes a proxy for audience demand before any frame of the film exists. At AFM, the sales response will show whether that proxy is strong enough to close deals without a trailer.
Yaitanes said the thriller genre has been “a lifelong passion,” and FilmNation founder and CEO Glen Basner called Infrared “a champion of bold genre films.”
Source: Deadline
