Rosamund Pike to star in and produce body-horror Feed as AFM sales open

Feed, a body-horror feature with Rosamund Pike as lead and producer and Leslye Headland directing from Daniella Isaacs’s screenplay, is heading into the American Film Market next week for international and US sales, Variety, Deadline and IndieWire reported on 5–6 November 2026.

Key facts

• Project: Feed, English-language body horror; Pike stars as Erin and produces through Primitive Streak
• Director and writer: Leslye Headland directs; Daniella Isaacs wrote the script, inspired by the 2022 Finnish film Hatching
• Sales: The Veterans handles international; CAA Media Finance handles the United States; AFM launch next week
• Finance so far: ZQ Entertainment financed script development; no production budget, start date or distributor named
• Other producers: Shelley Browning (Magnolia Entertainment), Steven Schneider (Spooky Pictures), Ara Keshishian and Petr Jakl (ZQ Entertainment), Sam Ritzenberg (Agile Films)

The package matters because a working star-producer is bringing a finished script and named sales agents into AFM without a studio home yet. Buyers get a commercial pitch – influencer motherhood as body horror – and a director with streaming and franchise credits. What they do not get yet is a budget, a start date or any cast beyond Pike.

What the film is

The logline, carried by Variety and Deadline, follows a mother who finds an obscure collagen supplement that she believes will turn her tween gymnast daughter into an influencer. Fame arrives quickly; as the daughter goes viral, she begins a “monstrous transformation”. Deadline’s description frames it as a twisted mother-daughter story about parental ambition, the illusion of protection, and the line between predator and prey. The script draws on Hatching (Pahanhautoja), Hanna Bergholm’s 2022 Finnish horror about a teenager and a creature that hatches from an egg.

Pike, in remarks carried by Variety, said the project lets her attack social-media vanity, unearned fame and what she called the monstrosity of modern motherhood. Deadline quotes a longer statement in which she frames Feed as a study of appetite: online communities, a market that sells youth and beauty, a mother’s hunger for her daughter’s success, and a teenage girl’s hunger for fame. Headland, also quoted by Variety, called Isaacs’s script audacious and said she wanted collaborators willing to work in the story’s darker corners.

Who is making it

Pike produces through Primitive Streak. The other producers named across the three trades are Browning for Magnolia Entertainment, Schneider for Spooky Pictures, Keshishian and Jakl for ZQ Entertainment, and Ritzenberg for Agile Films. ZQ Entertainment financed development; none of the reports discloses a production budget, equity structure or shooting window.

Headland created and ran Disney+’s The Acolyte and co-created Netflix’s Russian Doll. Her last theatrical feature as director was Sleeping with Other People (2015); Variety notes she also has Cult of Love, a Christmas family dramedy, in pre-production. Isaacs’s credits include People Who Knew Me. Pike’s recent film work cited by Variety includes Guy Ritchie’s In the Grey, Ladies First, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Hallow Road, with a further Ritchie reunion, Wife and Dog, listed for 2027.

Representation, per Variety: Pike is with CAA, United Agents and Magnolia Entertainment; Headland with CAA and Sugar23; Isaacs with Curtis Brown Group.

Sales path

The Veterans will sell internationally and CAA Media Finance will sell in the United States, with talks starting at AFM. That split is standard for a mid-budget English-language genre film that wants a theatrical or streamer home in North America and territory-by-territory deals abroad. No sales agent has named a price range, and no distributor is attached. For other AFM packages already on FilmBunch’s desk, see Antonio Banderas boarding Mare Nostrum for HanWay and Lionsgate’s animated John Wick prequel, which shows how a studio can lock talent before a market.

What is not known: budget, shoot dates, the daughter’s casting, any co-financier beyond development, and whether the finished film will seek a festival premiere or go straight to a buyer. The reports do not say whether Hatching’s rights holders are involved beyond the stated inspiration.

Our reading

Feed is a sales package built around a bankable lead who also produces, aimed at buyers who have chased young-audience horror through 2025–26. The Hatching peg gives the pitch a known European proof of concept without requiring a remake deal to be disclosed. For financiers, the open question is whether Headland’s return to features after a long run in series raises or lowers the ask; for sales agents, the test is whether AFM yields a US theatrical or SVOD deal before Christmas, or only foreign MGs.

The next evidence is a disclosed budget or start date, the casting of the daughter, and the first named territory or domestic deal out of AFM. Until then the story is a package announcement, not a greenlight. More under Deals and alongside FilmBunch’s coverage of Lionsgate’s latest quarter.

Sources

• Variety (5–6 November 2026; casting, logline, producers, sales agents, Pike and Headland statements)
• Deadline (5–6 November 2026; AFM sales launch, Erin character name, producers, statements)
• IndieWire (5–6 November 2026; casting, Hatching inspiration, sales split)
• TheWrap (6 November 2026; casting confirmation)