The Lost Bus Uncovered: Cast, Filming Locations, and the True Story Behind the Series
Premiering at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, The Lost Bus from Paul Greengrass, the filmmaker behind United 93 and the Bourne movies, is a white-knuckle rescue thriller about a bus driver racing to save 22 children and a teacher from a deadly fire.
Paul Greengrass took his camera into a wildfire and came back with The Lost Bus — a survival drama that plays like a pressure cooker and somehow still finds room for hope. It premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, hit theaters on September 19, 2025, and it is already pulling strong word of mouth from critics and audiences. Now that it is on streaming, here is the what, why, who, and where of it all.
What The Lost Bus is about (and why it hits hard)
Greengrass — the guy behind United 93 and the Bourne movies — tells the true story of a school bus driver who refuses to leave 22 kids and a teacher behind as the 2018 Camp Fire tears through Paradise, California. It is a tense, ground-level rescue movie about survival, but it is also about resilience and community when everything else is burning down.
The film is directed by Paul Greengrass, written by Greengrass and Brad Ingelsby, and backed by Apple Studios and Blumhouse Productions. On Rotten Tomatoes, it is sitting at 86% with critics and 92% with audiences.
Yes, it is based on a true story
The Lost Bus adapts journalist Lizzie Johnson's nonfiction book Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire. The movie dramatizes a real rescue during the Camp Fire, which raged across Butte County for more than two weeks in 2018. Sparked by faulty PG&E equipment, the blaze destroyed Paradise, displaced over 50,000 people, and killed 85 residents — the deadliest wildfire in California history.
Greengrass zeroes in on two people: Kevin McKay, a bus driver, and Mary Ludwig, a teacher. With flames closing in, they loaded up 22 elementary school students, armed themselves with one fire extinguisher and a lone water bottle, and drove roughly 30 miles through fire and smoke for nearly five hours. The goal was simple and impossible: get every kid back to their family. They did.
The real Kevin McKay, after the fire
In real life, Kevin McKay reshaped his path. He went back to California State University–Chico, earned a degree in history, and now teaches at Fair View High School. He is still with his long-time girlfriend and spends his free time on hikes and adventures. When the movie came together, he put it this way:
"Hearing that it was going to become a Hollywood motion picture was surreal, but it was also an honour."
Greengrass and the fire
The director has a track record for true-story, on-the-ground intensity, and he was drawn to this because it is built on real people and real choices. He used Johnson's book as the spine and keeps the focus tight on McKay and Ludwig, while also pointing at the bigger picture: this is what the climate crisis looks like when you are trapped inside it.
Who is in it
- Matthew McConaughey as Kevin McKay
- America Ferrera as Mary Ludwig
- Levi McConaughey as Shaun, Kevin's son
- Kay McConaughey as Sherry McKay, Kevin's mother
- Yul Vazquez as Ray Martinez, a Cal Fire battalion chief
- Ashlie Atkinson as Ruby, a tireless dispatcher
- Kate Wharton as Jen Kissoon
- Danny McCarthy as McKenzie
- Spencer Watson as Hopkins
- Gary Kraus as Sheriff Thomas
- Nathan Gariety as Levi (a different character — not to be confused with Levi McConaughey, who plays Shaun)
Inside baseball: the McConaughey family is in the mix
Yes, that is McConaughey's real-life son and his mom in the cast. Levi plays Kevin's on-screen son, and Kay plays Kevin's mother. It is rare to have that much family DNA in a movie, and it adds an extra layer to the father-son beats.
Where they filmed (and why they did not shoot in Paradise)
The story is set in Paradise, California, but the production intentionally did not film there out of respect for a community still dealing with trauma. Instead, they used New Mexico as a stand-in, shooting around Santa Fe, Espanola, and Ruidoso. The production hired about 2,500 New Mexicans — 480 crew members and roughly 2,100 background actors — which is a big footprint for a movie that feels so contained on screen.
Release timeline and how to watch
The Lost Bus premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival, opened in theaters on September 19, 2025, and after a limited run it moved to streaming. It is now available exclusively on Apple TV+ in the U.S., with an official streaming date of October 3, 2025. Apple TV+ is $12.99 a month and offers a 7-day free trial for new subscribers.
If you want a survival story that earns its sentiment without sugarcoating the chaos, this is that movie.