Matthew McConaughey struggles to save everyone in The Lost Bus trailer

Directed by Paul Greengrass, who co-wrote the script with Brad Ingelsby (Mare Of Easttown), The Lost Bus is inspired by true events that occurred during the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest fire in California history. Based on one of the tales from Lizzie Johnson’s book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle To Survive An American Wildfire, it follows McConaughey as a “wayward school bus driver” and America Ferrera as a “dedicated school teacher” on a “white-knuckle ride” to save 22 schoolchildren from the “terrifying inferno.” Based on the trailer alone, Greengrass has certainly captured the tension and trauma of the event—hearing those kids wail in fear as the bus barrels through the blaze is bone-chilling. 

Just as she launched Freakier Friday by calling up Bob Iger, Jamie Lee Curtis set the wheels of The Lost Bus in motion with an email to Blumhouse’s Jason Blum. Curtis read an excerpt from Johnson’s book about the heroic bus driver in The Washington Post: “I was alone in a cabin in the woods, and I remember saying out loud to myself, ‘Well, that’s the movie,'” the actor-producer told Vanity Fair. When she heard Johnson recounting the story again on NPR the next day, she pulled her car over to the side of the road and wrote to Blum,  “I want to buy it, and I believe it’s going to be the most important thing you and I ever do together.” Now, The Lost Bus is set to have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival ahead of its debut in theaters. Jamie Lee Curtis has done it again!