Brittany Murphy and Thora Birch Race to Make the 'Deadline'

She might not be able to wear animated miniskirts and fly around as Tinker Bell, but Brittany Murphy is going to get the chance to have a breakdown. The Hollywood Reporter posts that Murphy is teaming up with Thora Birch, Tammy Blanchard, and Marc Blucas for a new psychological thriller helmed by Sean McConville called Deadline.

Similar to The Shining, Deadline stars Murphy as a writer who decides to go to an abandoned house to write a screenplay. But instead of serial killers who don't die or weird kids on trikes, a "bout of writer's block and other unforeseen events lead her to a psychological breakdown." I assume that the rest of the players are accompanying her to the house, or live nearby or something, unless there are flashbacks or weird apparitions.

However it's being done, it'll be great to see both Murphy and Birch get creepy again. My favorite Brittany film was Don't Say a Word, and Thora handled eerie fare well in The Hole (that British school kid movie that also starred Keira Knightley and had both of them locked in a hole in the ground). (It'll also be nice to see Birch in something again -- her last films came out in 2006, although she has a handful of projects in the works now.) And also, Blucas -- will he be good like Riley, good with a tough shell exterior like Animal in Prey for Rock & Roll, or bad, bad, bad? Shooting began Wednesday in Louisiana.