MUMBAI: The star of Disney Channel’s about-to-end Shake It Up continues her march into more mature material. Having joined the indie Home Invasion earlier this year, Bella Thorne has now signed on along with Kyra Sedgwick as the leads in Manis Film’s thriller Big Sky.

The English language debut by Jorge Michel Grau, who helmed the original Spanish language chiller We Are What We Are, features Thorne as Hazel and the former The Closer star as her protective mother Dee. On their way to a desert facility to help the teen deal with her paralysing agoraphobia, the two find themselves attacked by gunmen and Hazel has to fight her own demons for the duo to survive.

Frank Grillo, who starred in End of Watch, Zero Dark Thirty and will be in upcoming CaptainAmerica: The Winter Soldier plays the male lead in the film along with Les Miserables’ Aaron Tveit. Randy Manis, Matthew Salloway and Christina Papagjika are producing. Christine Vachon is executive producing for Killer Films with Jeffrey V. Mandel of TBD Syndicate and AKA pictures’ Clayton Young. Ricky Tollman is co-producing.

AKA pictures - a subsidiary of Benaroya Pictures - is co-financing Big Sky. Having finished Warner Bros’ The Familymoon with Adam Sandler and Drew Berrymore earlier this summer, Thorne is next set for Disney’s Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.