Crime Drama ‘Kockroach’ Casts Channing Tatum, Oscar Isaac and Zazie Beetz in Lead Roles

The forthcoming crime drama Kockroach is currently in the early stages of production. Shooting has yet to begin on the film, and it won’t commence until the beginning of next year. So, what can be said about Kockroach at this early stage? Well, the production already has some key cast members, and it’s based on a novel that sounds every bit as bizarre as its title.

Some Truly Wild Source Material

Now, letter-swapping aside, it’s not the least bit perplexing to bring cockroach imagery into a crime tale. However, William Lashner’s 2007 novel, Kockroach (which he penned under the pseudonym “Tyler Knox”), doesn’t merely traffic in metaphors of resilient vermin. It’s literally the story of a cockroach that wakes up one day in his run-down hotel home to find himself transformed into a human being. Retaining the mentality of an insect, he discovers such human endeavors as crime and politics, which may well be id-driven enough for a roach-made-human to prosper in them.

(Kockroach is an inversion of a work called The Metamorphosis by classic early-20th-century surrealist writer Franz Kafka; in this 1915 novel, a man finds himself metamorphosed into an insect).

Kockroach Production Breakdown – What We Know

At present, three cast members are known to be attached to this project: Channing Tatum (Magic Mike), Oscar Isaac (Ex Machina), and Zazie Beetz (Joker). The specific roles to be played by these actors remain undisclosed.

The director of Kockroach is Matt Ross, noted for his 2016 film Captain Fantastic (which shares with “Kockroach” the likelihood of being mistaken for a superhero title) and for his acting roles in American Psycho and Silicon Valley. The screenwriter, Jonathan Ames, is also a novelist whose You Were Never Really Here was adapted into another very unique crime thriller in 2017.

Filming is scheduled to commence in Australia at the beginning of 2026.

Some Odd Coyness at This Early Stage

Interestingly, the makers of Kockroach appear not to be broadcasting the most striking elements of what they will presumably be bringing to the screen. Variety‘s coverage of the upcoming production describes the film merely as “the story of a mysterious stranger who transforms himself into a larger-than-life crime boss.”

Of course, this stranger’s mysteriousness will be nullified if any audience member does a quick Wikipedia search on the novel before going to see the film. Those who don’t do so will certainly get a great surprise in the theater, but it still seems unusual for the cockroach element to go unmentioned when it’s basically the starting point for the protagonist’s journey.

Will his roachhood, if you will, remain his starting point onscreen? Or will the movie frame this element differently, perhaps turning the crime boss’s inhuman identity into a stunning twist that retroactively explains his unprecedented amorality?