The Assis­tant direc­tor Kit­ty Green will take to the Out­back for her next film

The Assis­tant, Kit­ty Green​‘s har­row­ing account of one day in the office of a Har­vey Wein­stein-like show­biz tyrant, cast too harsh a light on the indus­try to get the trac­tion it deserved come awards sea­son in 2020. But crit­ics did all in their pow­er to spread the good word about Green’s sear­ing depic­tion of struc­tur­al pow­er abus­es — a top­ic that rears its ugly head once again with the announce­ment of the director’s much-antic­i­pat­ed follow-up.

This morn­ing, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter ran a bul­letin that Green is mov­ing for­ward in cast­ing on The Roy­al Hotel with plans to shoot this sum­mer in the Aus­tralian Out­back. In that respect, new addi­tion and Aussie native Hugo Weav­ing will be right at home, joined by Matrix: Res­ur­rec­tions break­out Jes­si­ca Hen­wick and the already-signed Julia Gar­ner, reunit­ing with Green after star­ring in The Assistant.

The Roy­al Hotel is the name of a seclud­ed min­ing town’s lone bar, where a pair of back­pack­ing best friends (Gar­ner and Hen­wick) find some tem­po­rary employ­ment on their cross-coun­try jour­ney. The bar’s own­er (Weav­ing) seems friend­ly enough as he and his mates ini­ti­ate the girls in the hard-drink­ing ways of Aus­tralians, but ​“things turn nasty when their jokes and behav­ior cross the line” and the girls soon find them­selves in danger’s way.

The pre­da­tion of men places this project right in line with the rest of Green’s accom­plished oeu­vre, which tends to inspect nox­ious gen­der dynam­ics from unex­pect­ed angles, whether that’s the pro­ce­dur­al work­place hos­til­i­ty of The Assis­tant or the unset­tling primp­ing of her docu-fic­tion hybrid Cast­ing Jon­Benet. Judg­ing from the rugged ter­rain of The Roy­al Hotel’s set­ting, this new reca­pit­u­la­tion of her cho­sen theme could include more of an ele­ment of action than we’ve seen in past work.

With prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy set for the sum­mer, we can safe­ly expect a debut at next year’s Sun­dance, where Green and her work have been warm­ly received in the past. And with her focus shift­ing away from the world of enter­tain­ment, maybe the rest of the indus­try will give her more of the recog­ni­tion she’s sore­ly overdue.