Inde Navarrette, whose unnerving turn as Nikki made Obsession one of the defining horror hits of 2026, has found her next lead role. On September 3, 2026, it was announced that the actress will star in The Waffle House Index, a sci-fi thriller set up at Apple Original Films with Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment producing. Navarrette will also serve as an executive producer — the first producing credit of her career.
The title comes from a real piece of disaster lore: the Waffle House Index is an informal metric used to gauge how badly a hurricane has hit an area, based on whether the local Waffle House is fully open, serving a limited menu, or closed outright. The film takes that concept somewhere far stranger. Navarrette plays a Waffle House waitress whose already miserable night shift collapses into chaos when a stranger with a gun walks into the restaurant. From there the story piles on:
- a massive flood
- killer crocodiles
- a nuclear explosion
- a mysterious bunker hidden beneath the Waffle House
- and, finally, aliens
Louis Paxton is directing from a screenplay by Andrew Nunnelly, which appeared on the 2025 Black List survey of the industry’s best-liked unproduced scripts. Apple reportedly landed the project in a seven-figure deal.
For Navarrette, the project caps a remarkable stretch. Curry Barker’s Obsession, in which a supernatural wish turns her character into a terrifyingly devoted version of herself, grossed more than US$505 million worldwide and turned the former 13 Reasons Why and Superman & Lois actress into one of the genre’s most talked-about new stars. She has already wrapped Invertigo, a thriller about teenagers trapped on a roller coaster, and has been reportedly linked to Marvel’s upcoming X-Men movie.
The Waffle House Index also extends a productive relationship between Apple and Plan B. The production company — led by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner — previously partnered with Apple on Pitt’s racing drama F1, recently produced the horror film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, and is preparing to shoot The Bell Jar, a drama directed by Sarah Polley.
As of September 2026, no release date has been announced. But a film that promises crocodiles, nukes and extraterrestrials descending on a 24-hour diner — anchored by the breakout star of the year’s biggest horror surprise — already sounds like one of the more intriguing bets on Apple’s slate.
