Bella Thorne’s new movie Find Your Friends has secured a distribution deal.
Bella Thorne’s new movie Find Your Friends has secured a distribution deal
As well as Bella, 28, the film, written and directed by Izabel Pakzad, also stars Chloe Cherry, Helena Howard, Sophia Ali and Zion Moreno, with Shudder acquiring the film ahead of its release on 12 June.
It follows a group of friends who leave Los Angeles for a trip to Joshua Tree, where escalating encounters with hostile locals lead to rising tensions and a violent struggle for survival.
The film premiered at Fantasia Film Festival and later screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest.
The acquisition deal covers distribution rights across North America, the UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Australia and New Zealand, according to reporting by Variety.
Izabel said about how her personal experience during a visit to the Joshua Tree inspired the film’s plot: “The Airbnb was on a dead end, of course. So you pull out of the driveway, and there’s this green Mustang that’s waiting outside on the street.
“He puts his brights on, turns his car and blocks me into the dead end. Immediately, I knew something was weird… this feels premeditated, something is wrong. On instinct, I just took the car and drove around him – right on the neighbor’s lawn – and just started speeding. But then it turned into a 100 m.p.h. car chase on the Joshua Tree freeway, where he was trying to swerve into my car, swerve me off the road. We were trying to call the police, but we had no service. Eventually, we saw a car in the distance and I just started calling for help and honking, and then he ended up turning around. But it was the most terrifying seven minutes of my life.”
Izabel, an Iranian–Greek American filmmaker, previously directed, wrote and starred in the 2022 short film Don’t Worry, It’s Gonna Be OK, which screened at the Raindance Film Festival and HollyShorts, and won best short film at the L.A. Film Festival.
She also produced and starred in Thena alongside Chris Bauer, Virginia Gardner, Brian Marc and Will Peltz, which premiered at the Taormina Film Festival in June 2025.
Izabel added about landing a distribution deal for her latest film: “Shudder champions work that refuses to play by the rules and challenges everything we think young women should be in genre films. My hope was to make a film that audiences find to be raw, unapologetic and bold and I am so grateful to be partners with them, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect home for Find Your Friends.”