Tony Winner Cynthia Erivo Joins Drew Goddard’s ‘Bad Times at the El Royale’ (Exclusive)

Broadway star and Tony winner Cynthia Erivo has joined Bad Times at the El Royale, Drew Goddard’s contained thriller being made by 20th Century Fox.

Goddard, who wrote the script and is producing, has been quietly putting together his cast over the last few weeks and is aiming for a January start.

Chris Hemsworth and Jeff Bridges are in talks to join the film, as The Hollywood Reporter exclusively reported. Newcomer Cailee Spaeny also recently joined the project.

The story is set at a run-down hotel near California’s Lake Tahoe named the El Royale and centers on a cast of characters whose own shady agendas will violently collide.

Bridges will play a priest, while Spaeny has been cast as an impressionable Southern girl. Details of Hemsworth’s role have not been revealed.

Erivo is one of the leads of the movie, playing a down-on-her-luck singer who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. The role does call for singing, according to insiders.

Erivo won the Tony Award for best actress in a musical for playing Celie in the 2015 revival of The Color Purple on Broadway, and she also won a Grammy for best musical theater album. Her appearance on NBC’s The Today Show also netted her and the Color Purple cast a Daytime Creative Emmy.

Erivo will be making her feature debut in Steve McQueen’s Widows with a cast that also includes Viola Davis and Liam Neeson. She also is attached to portray Harriet Tubman in the biopic Harriet, and is doing the animated cartoon TV series of The Boss Baby, based on the film. Erivo is repped by UTA and Authentic.