Rupert Grint set to star in first movie role in eight years

Harry Potter star Rupert Grint will appear in his first movie role in eight years when his latest flick lands in cinemas this month.

Grint, 34, will appear in M Night Shyamalan’s psychological horror Knock at the Cabin alongside Dave Bautista and Ben Aldridge. You can see a trailer here:

Grint, who is of course best known for his role as Ron Weasley, has clocked up a pretty impressive post-Potter CV with roles in The ABC Murders, Into The White and the Snatch mini-series, where he was also an executive producer.

However, although he recently appeared on the small screen in Netflix’s Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities - Grint hasn’t appeared in a movie since 2015’s Moonwalkers, where he played Jonny Thorpe.

Grint’s newest role in Knock at the Cabin is in stark contrast to his child-star days, which centres on a family being held hostage by a gang of strangers and is based upon the 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul G. Tremblay.

Universal Pictures

A synopsis for the movie reads: “While vacationing at a remote cabin in the woods, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand they make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. Confused, scared and with limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost.”

So quite a change from Hogwarts and Hagrid, then.

During a recent interview, Grint revealed that by the end of his time playing Ron the ‘lines were blurred’ between him and the character.

He told Bustle: “In the movies, we merged into one. By the end of it, I was playing myself. The lines were blurred.”

UPI/Alamy Stock Photo

He continued: “Potter was so full on - [filming] all year, then we’d promote the rest of the time.

“It was quite suffocating.

“I wanted a break, to reflect on everything... It was an out-of-body experience for a while, but I think we finished at the right time. If we continued, it could’ve gone downhill.”

The star has also admitted that he’d be happy to see someone else take on the role of Ron should the opportunity arise.

"I think there’d be a feeling of passing the baton, letting someone else play Ron,” he told GQ.

"It’s weird because I’m protective over him, I could relate to him so much, and then I was picked to bring him to life."

He added: "That’s hard to let go. But it would be nice to, as well."

Knock at the Cabin hits cinemas on 3 February.