Woody Harrelson to Lead Rick Alverson’s Sicily-Set Suspense Drama ‘Summer of Roses’

Woody Harrelson is set to headline Summer of Roses, a new suspense drama from filmmaker Rick Alverson that will shoot in Sicily next month, Deadline reported exclusively on Monday, September 14, 2026. The three-time Oscar nominee will play Thomas, a wealthy American expatriate in an intoxicated freefall, in a script Alverson co-wrote with Micah Jayne. Caleb Landry Jones—Harrelson’s co-star in Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri—is also attached, alongside Hannah Gross (The Drama) and musician-actor Kaya Wilkins (Okay Kaya).

The package is indie in structure but star-heavy enough to matter on the Hollywood casting calendar. Deadline said the film is produced by Benjamin Loeb and Magnus Castracane of Small Problems, Tyler Davidson and Drew Sykes of Low Spark Films, and Marco Alessi and Massimiliano Navarra of Dugong Films, together with Nick Grau, John Gray, and Derrick Tseng. Alverson’s Made Bed and Harrelson and Ilya Bronchtein’s Children at Play are executive producing; Katie Sanders is co-producer. Low Spark Films is financing in association with Gray’s It’s Not Pork and new-land, with WME Independent serving as producer representative. That financing stack pairs European production partners with U.S. indie financiers; Deadline has not announced a distributor.

Alverson’s recent résumé helps explain why Harrelson would board a mid-budget character piece instead of another franchise cameo. His last narrative feature, The Mountain with Jeff Goldblum, premiered in competition at Venice; earlier films Entertainment and The Comedy bowed at Sundance. Deadline also noted Alverson’s music-video work for artists including Oneohtrix Point Never, Sharon Van Etten, and Angel Olsen—useful context for a Sicily-set story that appears to prize mood and performance over plot synopsis. Harrelson, meanwhile, remains in a busy late-career lane: Deadline listed Apple TV’s Brothers opposite Matthew McConaughey (due September 23), Quentin Dupieux’s Full Phil with Kristen Stewart, and a recently wrapped Netflix crime lead opposite Sam Rockwell in Jason Bateman’s The Cackling of the Dodos.

For awards-season watchers, the casting news lands in a Hollywood week otherwise dominated by Emmy aftershocks—territory iShook Daily has already covered elsewhere. Summer of Roses is a different kind of story: not a trophy-night recap, but a working actor and an auteur locking dates, locations, and money for a character study about privilege unraveling abroad. Sicily is the production base Deadline reported for the shoot, with Italian partners Dugong Films already on the producer list.

Industry readers can pair this announcement with iShook Daily’s longer-running Hollywood career coverage—pieces that track how established stars choose between franchise obligations and director-driven dramas—without forcing an Emmy crossover. Harrelson’s Thomas is described only in outline so far. Until a buyer emerges, the verified facts are the ones Deadline put on the record: cast locked, Sicily start next month, financing in place, and an exclusive that other trade roundups have since echoed.

If the shoot holds, Summer of Roses becomes another data point in 2026’s mid-tier drama pipeline—projects that do not need tentpole marketing to move careers, yet still depend on recognizable leads to secure foreign sales. Harrelson’s attachment supplies that sales logic; Alverson’s Venice and Sundance track record supplies the critical logic. Hollywood’s business story this week is not only who won statues on Monday night, but who is quietly booking October cameras in Sicily.

The timing also matters for talent calendars. With Brothers arriving on Apple TV on September 23 and other completed work awaiting release windows, Harrelson is stacking a prestige-indie shoot between promotional obligations—an old Hollywood pattern that still signals seriousness about director-driven material. Italian partners Dugong Films sit on the producer list alongside U.S. indie financiers, as Deadline reported—keeping the package’s known facts to cast, location, and money rather than unannounced crew or sales strategy.

No U.S. distributor, theatrical date, or festival target has been announced yet. What is on the record as of September 14 is the cast, the director, a Sicily start next month, and a named financing group. In a Hollywood week crowded with awards aftershocks, Summer of Roses is a different kind of headline: cameras, contracts, and a star choosing a freefall character piece while the industry is still debating who took home which statue.

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