Vanessa Kirby Must Race Against the Clock in 'Night Always Comes'

Thanks to the premiere of The Fantastic Four: First Steps this weekend, the world is about to come to know British actress Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, one of the most famous heroines in all of Marvel comics. But to Anglophiles everywhere, she'll always be Princess Margaret in The Crown. Kirby's breakout performance as Queen Elizabeth II's younger sister won raves from virtually every corner and is one of the most memorable aspects of a show full of standout moments. And it's yielded some rather thrilling career moves for the actress, including a turn as Empress Josephine Bonaparte in director Ridley Scott's Napoleon. Next up, she'll take on the lead role in Netflix's high-stakes thriller Night Always Comes, about a woman's desperate struggle to survive.

Based on Willy Vlautin’s 2021 novel The Night Always Comes, the story follows Leanne (Kirby), a working-class woman in the Pacific Northwest who embarks on a quest to find the money to save her home after she's put in a financial bind by her irresponsible mother. Over the course of a single, stressful night, her journey will take her through the seediest corners of Portland as she calls in old debts, faces her own dark past in new ways, and struggles to find the cash to both keep a roof over her head and keep her developmentally disabled older brother living with the family.

If the trailer is anything to go by, Night Always Comes looks set to be a high-tension, propulsive story, as Leanna is forced to make impossible choices and decide how far she's willing to go in order to survive.

Here's the film's logline.

Risking everything to secure a future for herself and her brother, a woman sets out on a dangerous odyssey — confronting her own dark past over one propulsive night.

Alongside Kirby, the ensemble cast also includes Jennifer Jason Leigh (Lisey's Story), Julia Fox (Uncut Gems), Eli Roth (Borderlands), Randall Park (Watson), Michael Kelly (The Penguin), and Zack Gottsagen (The Peanut Butter Falcon)

The film re-teams Kirby with former The Crown director Ben Caron, who is working from a script by Sarah Conradt (Mother's Instinct). 

“The emotional core [of the book] was my compass,” Caron told Netflix's Tudum. “But there’s a heightened sense of immediacy and propulsion to cinema where the audience feels every blow and every betrayal and every hope. The adaptation became even more of a character-driven thriller with Lynette at the center of every frame. I also opened up the book by having Portland itself become a character in the movie — the contrast between the city’s foreclosed buildings and the gentrified neighborhoods reflecting Lynette’s personal crisis.” 

Both Kirby and Caron are executive producers on the project, with Gary Levinsohn, Billy Hines, Ryan Bartecki, Jodie Caron, and Lauren Dark producting. 

NIght Always Comes will premiere globally on Netflix on August 15, 2025.