The Big Picture

Matthew McConaughey to star in The Lost Bus, a film based on the devastating 2018 Camp Fire. The film will focus on bus driver Kevin McKay and school teacher Mary Ludwigbe who saved schoolchildren during the fire. The Lost Bus is being produced by Jamie Lee Curtis’ Comet Pictures and Blumhouse, with Apple in negotiations to acquire it.

Matthew McConaughey has been on a Hollywood hiatus lately, but he’s set to board The Lost Bus. The film will chronicle the devastating 2018 Camp Fire, and is slated to be directed by Paul Greengrass. Deadline reports that the film, which is based on Lizzie Johnson’s non-fiction book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire, will center around bus driver Kevin McKay and school teacher Mary Ludwigbe, who helped get a bus full of schoolchildren to safety amid the blaze that killed 85 people in the fall of 2018. It will be produced by Jamie Lee Curtis’ Comet Pictures and Blumhouse; Curtis brought the project to Blumhouse after hearing Johnson on NPR. The film does not yet have a distributor, but Apple is in negotiations to acquire it.

McConaughey’s last live-action lead role was in 2019’s The Gentlemen; since then, he has lent his voice to the animated sequel Sing 2 and voiced the title role in Netflix’s short-lived Agent Elvis. He has a Yellowstone spinoff in development at Paramount, and is also reuniting with his True Detective costar Woody Harrelson for an Apple comedy series, playing fictionalized versions of themselves. He is also slated to star in The Rivals of Amziah King, an Oklahoma-set crime thriller from The Vast of Night’s Andrew Patterson.

What Was the Camp Fire?

Named after Camp Creek Road in Butte County, California, where it began, the Camp Fire was ignited by a faulty power line on November 8, 2018. The drought-stricken region was quickly engulfed in the worst wildfire in recorded California history, which raged for over two weeks before firefighters were able to get it under control, helped by a winter rainstorm. Eighty-five people were killed in the resulting inferno, which burned over 150,000 acres of land; the towns of Paradise and Concow were almost completely incinerated, and the communities of Magalia and Butte Creek Canyon were also badly damaged. The Pacific Gas and Electric Company, the power conglomerate whose power line sparked the blaze, was found liable for the deaths and damage, and settled with the fire’s victims and their families for over $13 billion USD.

The Lost Bus will be Greengrass’ first film since the 2020 western The News of the World; he is also set to direct an adaptation of T.J. Newman’s novel Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421, but Deadline reports that he will tackle The Lost Bus first. The script is by Brad Ingelsby (The Way Back, Mare of Easttown); he will also produce with Greg Goodman. Author Johnson will executive produce with Amy Lord.

The Lost Bus, starring Matthew McConaughey, is in pre-production. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, and watch McConaughey’s interview with Collider for Sing 2 below.

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