Bob Yari’s Magenta Light Studios has acquired North American theatrical rights to Lice, the horror-thriller starring Justin Long, with a theatrical release set for Q1 2027.

The film is Jonathan Bensimon’s feature directorial debut and follows a deadly parasite outbreak at a Long Island high school in the 1980s, where the school goes under military lockdown and students turn on each other in a desperate bid to survive.

The cast also includes Emile Hirsch and Kevin Connolly, who plays Detective Sikorski. Hirsch appears as burned-out science teacher Mr. Shanker, while Long plays Principal Van. Connolly is also producing through his ActionPark Productions banner, alongside Jeremy Alter. Bob Yari and David Spiegelman are executive producers for Magenta Light Studios, with Eustace Montgomery Hicks also serving as an executive producer.

Yari said the script stood out from the start as a bold and wildly original ride, and said Bensimon made a film that is as smart as it is unsettling, balancing dark humor, suspense and real emotional stakes. Bensimon said he and the team wanted Lice to feel like a visceral throwback thrill ride, with pulpy, unsettling and darkly funny elements, and said the film was shaped with bold, tactile techniques to give it a look that feels both nostalgic and immediate.

That pitch matches the project’s wider strategy. Lice is being positioned as a horror-thriller with horror-comedy elements, and Highland Film Group is handling international sales out of Cannes. The North American rights deal gives Magenta Light the film’s theatrical home in the U.S. and Canada, while the international side is being moved separately.

The question now is not whether the film has the cast or the packaging to get attention. It does. The real test is whether a 1980s parasite outbreak set in a military-locked high school can turn its ugly premise into the kind of theatrical event the filmmakers are promising when Lice reaches cinemas in 2027.