While David Lynch prepares to team up with Werner Herzog to make a guerilla-style murder drama, his daughter is doing quite well on her own, thank you very much. indieWIRE reports that Surveillance, the first film by Jennifer Chambers Lynch in 15 years, has been picked up by Magnet Releasing for distribution in the US. The thriller will be playing out of competition at Cannes next week in one of the three Midnight screening slots.

Surveillance is set in the Santa Fe desert, where a blood-curdling killing spree has been unleashed, according to the official synopsis. The FBI arrives and listens to three eyewitnesses, including an eight-year-old girl whose family was brutally murdered. It becomes clear that the little girl knows something about the FBI agents ... and then two more bodies are found.

Creepy, eh? But not nearly as creepy as Lynch's first film, Boxing Helena, in which a surgeon held a woman captive and started amputating her limbs, all in the name of love. Based on the premise, Surveillance sounds much more straightforward, but perhaps the younger Lynch has some surprises up her sleeve.

The film stars Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman (David Lynch's Lost Highway) as the FBI agents, Pell James, Ryan Simpkins, and Kent Harper as the witnesses, and Michael Ironside as the local police chief. French Stewart and Cheri Oteri are also featured. Harper co-wrote the script with Lynch. Magnet Releasing, the genre arm of Magnolia Pictures, plans a fall theatrical roll-out.

Odds and ends from Monday:

• Billy Burke (Ladder 49) has signed on to star in Jennifer Chambers Lynch's (Yes, that's daughter to director David Lynch) Surveillance, her second directorial effort following 1993's Boxing Helena (Yes, that's fifteen years since her last film). Pic follows an FBI agent who gets help tracking a serial killer from the lunatic's would-be-victims. Production is set to begin in or around October.
• Newbie Jodie Whittaker and Viggo Mortenson will take lead roles in Good, an adaptation from the award-winning play. Directed by Vincente Amorin, story revolves around a German professor who, during the 1930s, is seduced (I take it flowers and a goodnight kiss weren't involved) by the Nazi party. Yeah, it's safe to say things didn't go well there from then on out.
• Shortly after the death of animal lover Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin, the rumor mill jumped all over Russell Crowe saying the actor was interested in playing Irwin in a possible biopic. However, Crowe shot down the reports (in a rather absurd Crowe-like way) by saying, "That's one of those appalling pieces of sh*t that's come out of the press. While my friend's body is still warm, I'm being accused of doing commerce over his grave, and it absolutely disgusts me." He then picked up Irwin's coffin and chucked it at the reporter. I mean, so they say ...