Kristen Stewart, Vicky Krieps, Niels Schneider, Riley Keough, Wagner Moura and German cinema legend Barbara Sukowa, best known for her landmark collaborations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Margarethe von Trotta are among the alluring players that will step into the supernatural and fantastic worlds that Olivier Assayas built in Irma Vep and Personal Shopper. Titled Spiritual World, Stewart plays Ada, a haunted young woman with clairvoyant powers who is visited by mysterious premonitions.
Curiosa Films’ Olivier Delbosc and ARTE France are producing. Production is set for a February start date moving into Avril in parts of France and Germany. This is Stewart’s third pairing with Assayas – they collaborated on 2014’s Clouds of Sils Maria and 2016’s Personal Shopper.
EXCLUSIVE: Fresh off his first Academy Award nomination for The Secret Agent, Wagner Moura has inked a deal to star opposite Kristen Stewart in Flesh of the Gods, a vampire thriller from Mandy helmer Panos Cosmatos that A24 has newly boarded as U.S. distributor.
Moura takes over a lead role from Oscar Isaac, who we’re told exited due to a scheduling conflict.
First announced during the summer of 2024, as part of the Cannes Market, Flesh of the Gods follows Raoul (Moura) and Alex (Stewart), a married couple in glittering ’80s Los Angeles who descend each evening from their luxury skyscraper condo and head into an electric nighttime realm. When they cross paths with the mysterious and enigmatic Nameless and her hard-partying cabal, Raoul and Alex are seduced into a glamorous, surrealistic world of hedonism, thrills and violence.
Pic is written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) from a story by Cosmatos and Walker. Adam McKay and Betsy Koch are producing for HyperObject Industries, alongside Jonas Katzenstein and Maximilian Leo for Germany’s augenschein Filmproduktion, and Stewart and Maggie McLean for Nevermind Pictures. XYZ Films is handling international sales and financing the project in association with IPR.VC.
Moura made history with The Secret Agent by becoming the first Brazilian nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, as well as the first Brazilian to win a Golden Globe for acting and Cannes’ prize for Best Actor. Released in the U.S. by Neon, the film from Kleber Mendonça Filho had him playing Marcelo, a technology expert who becomes entangled in a high-stakes political conspiracy amid the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship.
Breaking out a little over a decade ago with his turn as Pablo Escobar in Netflix’s Narcos, which brought him his first Golden Globe nomination, Moura has also recently been seen in Alex Garland’s A24 film Civil War, as well as Apple’s crime drama Dope Thief opposite Brian Tyree Henry. Next up, he’ll be seen starring in Louis Leterrier’s Netflix sci-fi horror flick 11817, opposite Greta Lee, as well as in the drama The Last Day, opposite Alicia Vikander. He is repped by WME and Johnson, Shapiro, Slewett & Kole.
Directed by French director Quentin Dupieux and co-starring Woody Harrelson, Charlotte Le Bon, Emma MacKey. Nassim Lyes, Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim.
Studiocanal is reteaming with French producer Hugo Selignac for Quentin Dupieux‘s star-studded next movie, “Full Phil,” which brings together Kristen Stewart and Woody Harrelson alongside Emma Mackey and Charlotte Le Bon.
Studiocanal will be handling international sales on the English-language film, which will be distributed in France by Diaphana and has been pre-bought by Canal+.
The hot project might have a “White Lotus” vibe. Harrelson stars as Philip Doom, a wealthy American industrialist who attempts to reconnect with his daughter Madeleine (played by Stewart) during a luxurious trip to Paris. “Unfortunately, French cuisine, a 1950s horror film and an intrusive hotel employee disrupt the smooth running of their stay,” reads the synopsis. Tim Heidecker and Nassim Lyes complete the cast.
While the film features American actors, it’s filming entirely in Paris with Dupieux’s regular French crew. “Full Phil” is not his English-language debut; he previously made “Rubber,” which lensed in California with a cast including Stephen Spinella.
The prolific and iconoclastic filmmaker — who was previously a successful French electronic musician and record producer — is known for his absurdist and quirky sense of humor, as well as his boldness that stands out in the French cinema landscape. His 2024 film “The Second Act,” which world premiered on the opening night of Cannes Film Festival, delivered a hilarious stab at a French actors (played by Lea Seydoux, Vincent Lindon and Louis Garrel) adjusting to the #MeToo era while filming a romantic comedy. The movie ended up being a commercial success, selling over 500,000 tickets in French theaters.
“It’s wild — Quentin’s films are extremely popular with the coolest American actors,” said Selignac, whose company Chi-Fou-Mi is part of Mediawan. “When we send them Quentin’s films, they’re struck, because when you look at American comedy today, it’s a bit dead.”
Selignac said that “‘The Second Act,’ in particular, generated a lot of excitement. Suddenly, American actors said to themselves, ‘Wait, can we still make films like this? Can we still laugh at everything? Can we still make jokes like this about women, men, minorities?'”
Dupieux’s films always feature prestigious French casts and have become a reference for young cinephiles, performing well at the local box office and selling around the world. Selignac attributes the filmmaker’s acclaim to his “talent for writing extraordinary roles and his exceptional dialogue.”
Selignac has had a win-win partnership with Studiocanal. The company has backed 13 films produced by him, including Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts” (which grossed $36 million in France) and Cedric Jimenez’s thrillers “The Stronghold” and “November.” They have also partnered on the upcoming “Dog 51,” which world premiered on the closing night of Venice Film Festival and is being theatrically released by Studiocanal on Oct. 15.
Deadline Kristen Stewart (Love Lies Bleeding) and Alia Shawkat (Blink Twice) will topline The Wrong Girls, a new Neon film marking the directorial debut of Dylan Meyer, which is up and running in Los Angeles — one of the first indies to kick off production following the devastating wildfires.
Others in the cast include Seth Rogen — who also produces via Point Grey — as well as Kumail Nanjiani, LaKeith Stanfield, Zack Fox, and Tony Hale.
Written and directed by Meyer, the film follows Frankie (Stewart) and Molly (Shawkat), codependent best friends living paycheck to paycheck and bong rip to bong rip, when a case of mistaken identity throws their lives into chaos. Neon will release the film in U.S. theaters and also reps international rights
The film will be produced by Maggie McLean, Stewart and Meyer for Nevermind Pictures; Alex McAtee, James Weaver, Rogen and Evan Goldberg for Point Grey; and Allison Carter and Jon Read for Savage Rose Productions under their production and development partnership with Neon. Overseeing for Neon will be Jason Wald, EVP Acquisitions & Production, Claire Timmons, VP Talent Relations, and Kate Gondwe, Manager ADP. The deal was negotiated with WME Independent and UTA Independent Film Group.
The Wrong Girls marks Neon’s third film with Stewart following Pablo Larraín’s Spencer, which brought the actress her first Oscar nomination for her turn as Princess Diana, as well as David Cronenberg’s Cannes selection Crimes of the Future.
Coming off of rave reviews for her turn in Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding, Stewart will next be seen in Michael Angarano’s road trip comedy Sacramento, out April 11. She’s wrapped production on her feature directorial debut, The Chronology of Water, and will also soon be seen starring in Panos Cosmatos’ vampire pic Flesh of the Gods opposite Oscar Isaac, as well as Amazon MGM’s limited series The Challenger on astronaut Sally Ride.
Shawkat has recently been seen in Zoë Kravitz’s acclaimed directorial debut Blink Twice and the second season of Apple TV+’s Severance, as well as the buzzy Sundance drama Atropia, which won the festival’s U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize.
Meyer produced Stewart’s The Chronology of Water and is otherwise perhaps best known for co-writing the Amy Poehler-directed dramedy Moxie.
Neon is the studio behind Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or wunner Anora, which is currently up for six Oscars, including Best Picture. The company also released Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which is up for Best International Feature, and this weekend unveils The Monkey, filmmaker Osgood Perkins’ anticipated follow-up to Longlegs. Other upcoming Neon productions include Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters, David Robert Mitchell’s They Follow, and Michael Covino’s Splitsville.
Stewart is repped by WME and McKuin Frankel Whitehead; Shawkat by UTA, Mgmt Entertainment, and Lichter, Grossman, Nichols; Rogen by UTA, Principal Entertainment LA, and Felker Toczek Suddleson; Nanjiani by UTA, Mosaic, and Schreck Rose Dapello; Stanfield by CAA, Stark Management, and Ginsburg Daniels Kallis; Fox by WME and Elixr Global; Hale by UTA and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller; and Meyer by UTA, Anonymous Content, and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller.
Indiewire Kristen Stewart has found the right co-stars for her upcoming feature “The Wrong Girls.” Stewart, who co-wrote the film with her fiancée Dylan Meyer (“Moxie”), will also star in the feature and produce it. “The Wrong Girls” was announced in 2023, with Stewart describing it as a “stoner-girl comedy” at the time. Alia Shawkat will also star in the film; Stewart acted alongside Shawkat in “The Runaways” in 2010.
The supporting cast also includes Seth Rogen, Kumail Nanjiani, LaKeith Stanfield, Zack Fox, and Tony Hale. NEON will release the film theatrically in the U.S. and represent the international rights.
The film is Meyer’s directorial debut. The film follows Frankie (Stewart) and Molly (Shawkat), two codependent best friends who are living paycheck to paycheck and bong rip to bong rip, when a case of mistaken identity throws their lives into chaos.
Stewart told IndieWire while promoting “Love Me” that she is “doing backflips” about having “The Wrong Girls” go into production.
“Dylan wrote that script, ‘The Wrong Girls,’ years ago and we are producing it now,” Stewart said. “We start shooting in two weeks and I’m like doing backflips about it. I’m so excited we get to shoot in L.A. and that in and of itself seems like a fantasy. Alia Shawkat is my other ‘Wrong Girl’ and we’re putting it together, like in quite a literal way, right now.”
Production began in early February. The feature is one of the first independent films going into production in L.A. amid the recent devastating wildfires.
Over the course of the film’s 29 day production, the film will employ approximately 100 people per day, 95 percent of which will be local L.A. residents, including Emmy-nominated cinematographer Todd Banhazl (“Winning Time”, “Hustlers”), singer-songwriter and composer Ty Segall, and Emmy-nominated costumer Heidi Bivens (“Euphoria”). Philadelphia punk band Mannequin Pussy will also bring their explosive energy to the film with a live performance at a long-shuttered Los Angeles DIY space.
“The Wrong Girls” is NEON and Stewart’s third collaboration together following Pablo Larraín’s acclaimed Academy Award-nominated 2021 film “Spencer” and David Cronenberg’s 2022 Cannes Official Selection “Crimes of the Future.”
Kristen Stewart will make her TV series-starring debut in The Challenger, a limited series in which she’ll play Sally Ride, the astronaut and physicist who became the first American woman to fly in space. She did this as part of a NASA space shuttle astronaut class of 1978 that was the first to be diversified and not comprised of all white men.
Kyra Sedgwick’s Big Swing Productions developed and brought the project to Amblin and is executive producing with Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and Stewart through the latter’s Nevermind production label. Amblin’s Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey are also exec producers.
Maggie Cohn will serve as the writer and showrunner; her credits include American Crime Story, The Staircase and Narcos: Mexico. This has been the hot property on the TV auction block this week, and Amazon is close to tying it down.
The series is based on The New Guys, a book written by Meredith E. Bagby, who partners with Sedgwick and Valerie Stadler in Big Swing. They are also executive producers.
In some ways, this has the tapestry to tell the successor story to The Right Stuff, which was based on Tom Wolfe’s book about the culture clash that occurred when the cockiest world’s best fighter pilots jumped into the space race that America was engaged in with the Russians. Bagby tells the story of a group that was called by their predecessors ‘The F*cking New Guys,’ as NASA sought to diversify its pilots and crew for the space shuttle program. Ride was the first woman and the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to fly into space. Also in that program was the first Black and Asian American astronauts, and a married couple. They passed all the rigorous tests to become top of the class, and egos, ambition and romance were part of the cultural clash. They were also quite brilliant.
In 1983, Ride became the first American woman to fly on the space shuttle, and became an instant celebrity. That joy was short-lived, however, when three years later the space shuttle Challenger blew apart 73 seconds into its ascent, killing all seven members of the crew. Ride then became the only astronaut to become part of the Rogers Commission, a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, and it later came out that she pinpointed the problems with O-rings that became stiff at low temperature, and that turned out to be the reason for the explosion. Ride died from cancer at age 61 in 2012, a true American hero.
The hope will be to get this ready to time the series in proximity of the Challenger disaster anniversary. That happened 38 years ago, on January 28, 1986. For Stewart, this continues a career evolution which started after the Twilight Saga films, in which she has established herself as a most watchable actress with range.
In a moment where not a lot is selling in the marketplace, how does a plum package like this happen? Sedgwick explains this was a truly homegrown project, and not one that happened overnight:
“This is something we’ve worked on at Big Swing since 2017, me, Meredith and Valerie, about this new class of astronaut recruited by NASA in the early 1970s,” she said. “Sally Ride was among them, and the focus is this newly recruited wild, feral group of astronauts who were all very diverse. And then on an Oppenheimer track, it also tells the story of the Rogers Commission that investigated the Challenger disaster that Ride took part in. Growing up in Florida, Meredith Bagby was obsessed with space and the shuttle, and she also watched the Challenger explode. Meredith got hundreds of hours of interviews with the members of that class, and we have relationships with all those living astronauts and they will be part of our brain trust on the show.
“She wrote the book and it went on the bestseller lists,” Sedgwick told Deadline. “We wanted so much to tell this story as a limited series. Our goal at Big Swing is to tell familiar stories with a new perspective and point of view. I had a relationship with Maggie Cohn, and she fell in love with the book. Valerie had this dream of having Kristen Stewart, and after more than a year of trying to get Kristen this book through back channeling, she read it and she fell in love. Getting Kristen and Maggie was incredible, for a company nobody really knows yet. We are three girls with a dream.
“Then we thought, what better than to bring in Steven Spielberg to help tell this awe-inspiring story of the astronauts who inspired space travel for a new generation? They helped us prepare the pitch that went out to the marketplace, and it has been extremely competitive and we are close to a deal.”
Making Stewart the centerpiece was also interesting in that TV was not an obsession for her.
“She has never done television, but when she read this she became obsessed with telling the story of Sally Ride from her own unique perspective that I won’t even try to paraphrase because she is so eloquent about it,” Sedgwick said. “She was so stunning in these pitch meetings and that was a huge part of why it has been so competitive. She’s so compelling and was so rabid about telling this story about an American hero who had to hide who she was, in that time.
“Who better to play Sally Ride than one of the great actors of her generation? As they say in Hollywood, passion wins the day. Her passion for being an executive producer is vast. As dogged as we were about getting the script to her, she has been that dogged about getting it sold in the marketplace.”
Even though Sedgwick herself is most closely associated with the role of the closer, it was Stewart who played that role in the pitch process.
“Right now when everyone is saying that nobody is buying anything, she would not listen and nor would we because if we had listened to all the times we were told this would be too hard, we would never have gotten this off the ground. Amblin spoke first, Maggie was great, and then they passed it to me, I was the one to pass to Kristen and was the one who got to kvell about her because I’d just seen Love Lies Bleeding. We were all in it to win it.”
Auction was brokered by WME (which reps Stewart and Amblin) and CAA (which reps Sedgwick, Big Swing and Cohn).
Kristen Stewart and Oscar Isaac are set to star in vampire thriller Flesh of the Gods from director Panos Cosmatos (Mandy).
Isaac and Stewart will portray Raoul and Alex, a married couple in glittering ’80s L.A. who descend each evening from their luxury skyscraper condo and head into an electric nighttime realm. When they cross paths with the mysterious and enigmatic Nameless and her hard-partying cabal, Raoul and Alex are seduced into a glamorous, surrealistic world of hedonism, thrills and violence.
The film is written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) based on a story by Cosmatos and Walker, and is produced by Adam McKay and Betsy Koch of Hyperobject Industries and Gena Konstantinakos and Isaac for Mad Gene Media.
Domestic rights are co-repped by CAA and WME, with XYZ Films handling international sales at the upcoming Marché du Film at Cannes. The film is set to shoot later this year.
Twilight star Stewart was Oscar-nominated for Spencer and most recently starred in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding, which was released in March by A24.
Golden Globe winner Isaac is in production on Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein and is coming off Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, Moon Knight, and Dune.
Director Cosmatos is best known for psychedelic revenge thriller Mandy starring Nicolas Cage, which premiered at Sundance and then played in Cannes.
That 2018 film was his sophomore and most recent feature. Flesh of the Gods marks the third collaboration between Cosmatos and XYZ. They also have Nekrokosm in development with A24.
Walker is best known for writing David Fincher’s Se7en, Joel Schumacher’s 8MM, and Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. He most recently wrote David Fincher’s The Killer.
Oscar winner Adam McKay said: “This director, this writer, these incredible actors, vampires, choice 80’s punk, style and attitude for miles… that’s the film we’re bringing you today. We think it’s wildly commercial and wildly artful. Our ambitions are to make a movie that ripples through popular culture, fashion, music, and film. Can you tell how excited I am?”
“Like Los Angeles itself Flesh Of The Gods inhabits the liminal realm between fantasy and nightmare. Both propulsive and hypnotic, Flesh will take you on a hot rod joy ride deep into the glittering heart of hell,” added Cosmatos.
Isaac is repped by WME and Goodman, Genow. Stewart is repped by WME and McKuin Frankel Whitehead. Cosmatos is repped by CAA and Weintraub Tobin. Walker is repped by Brillstein Entertainment Partners and Ziffren Brittenham.
Kristen Stewart is sounding the alarm over the threat of a global nuclear war by getting behind Paul Jay’s feature doc about Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, How to Stop a Nuclear War, which is now in production.
“We’ve grown so accustomed to the looming threat of nuclear annihilation, that it barely registers in our daily lives,” Stewart says in a fundraising video obtained by The Hollywood Reporter for the documentary, which is based on the book Doomsday Machine by the Vietnam-era whistleblower. “But when some new crisis or close call startles out of our slumber for just a brief moment, we truly grasp the insanity of living on a hair trigger to what could be a real-life Armageddon.”
Stewart’s fiancée, Dylan Meyer, is the daughter of Nicholas Meyer, the director of ABC’s groundbreaking 1983 TV movie The Day After and an executive producer of the How to Stop a Nuclear War documentary. Emma Thompson is also on board to narrate the upcoming feature doc, where Ellsberg warns that the nuclear weapon arsenals of the U.S. and Russia are still very much a threat to global peace, and that an all-out nuclear war remains capable of being launched from missile silos or submarines on a few minutes’ notice.
Stewart, who will also appear in the eventual documentary, echoes Ellsberg in arguing the world is “dangerously close to nuclear conflict, perhaps closer than we have been since the Cold War.”
In the sizzle reel sent to potential investors of the doc as the producers fill out the budget, Stewart praises the history-making whistleblower, who died in June 2023 at age 92. “[Ellsberg’s] insider knowledge of nuclear war planning informs the film’s urgent call to action. This films sounds the alarm about this threat, but also shows the solutions and steps we can take to avert catastrophe,” she adds.
Ellsberg famously made copies of the Pentagon Papers and other classified nuclear documents during the Nixon administration and leaked the documents to The New York Times and other media outlets in 1971. As a high-level Pentagon analyst, Ellsberg was charged by the U.S. with breaking the Espionage Act, but the case was dismissed because of government misconduct in evidence-gathering.
“If we don’t address this [nuclear weapons] issue, nothing else we care about — no social justice or environmental causes or peaceful political resolutions, movies we make, people we love, the things we care about — don’t matter anymore. They don’t matter in a postapocalyptic wasteland,” Stewart warns.
The 2023 Cannes Film Festival may be slowly winding down, but a red hot new project has just landed in the market to spice things up.
Kristen Stewart (Spencer), Josh O’Connor (The Crown, God’s Own Country) and Elle Fanning (Teen Spirit, The Great) are set to lead the cast of Rosebushpruning, the next feature from Karim Aïnouz, whose Jude Law- and Alicia Vikander-starring period drama Firebrand last week had its world premiere in Cannes’ main competition to hugely positive reviews. The Match Factory and MUBI are backing the film.
The Hollywood Reporter understands that Aïnouz will direct from a script written by Efthimis Filippou (Dogtooth, Killing of Sacred Deer, The Lobster) and adapted from Marco Bellocchio’s 1965 debut feature Fists in the Pocket, a dark satire of family and social values now considered a landmark piece of Italian cinema. The adaptation rights were acquired from Kavac Film.
The Match Factory previously worked with Aïnouz on his 2019 Un Certain Regard-winning film The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão. Viola Fügen and Michael Weber are producing Rosebushpruning for The Match Factory, which is also handling sales for the film. CAA Media Finance represents North American distribution rights. MUBI is financing production.
“Marco Bellocchio’s astonishing debut, Fists in the Pocket, was released over 50 years ago and had a huge impact on Italian cinema and storytelling at the time,” said Aïnouz. “I’m excited to be collaborating with Efthimis Filippou to revisit this iconic work to create a contemporary parable about the death of the traditional patriarchal family — which I hope will be touching and provocative in equal measure. It’s a dream come true to be working with such a dynamic ensemble of actors that I have long admired to bring this explosive adaptation to audiences today.”
Rosebushpruning is set to start production in spring 2024.
Stewart is represented by WME and McKuin/Frankel/Whitehead. O’Connor is represented by CAA, Independent Talent Group, and Johnson Shapiro Slewett & Kole. Fanning is repped by UTA, Echo Lake Entertainment, and Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Kaller, Gellman, Meigs & Fox. Aïnouz is represented by Lark Management, CAA and JSSK.
In the original Fists in the Pocket, a young man suffering from epilepsy (Lou Castel in his debut film role) plots the murders of his dysfunctional family. It proved controversial at the Locarno Festival, where it had its premiere and was condemned by several major cinema figures, but was warmly received by younger critics and audiences, becoming a sleeper hit. In 2008, Italy’s Ministry of Culture placed it on its list of 100 films to be saved, a collection of films that had “changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978.”
Kristen Stewart (Spencer) is joining Michael Angarano (This Is Us), Michael Cera (Juno) and Maya Erskine (Pen15) in road-trip comedy Sacramento.
Angarano is directing the feature, which is due to shoot this spring. He also co-wrote the script with Chris Smith.
Pic follows Rickey (Angarano), an energetic and free-spirited young man, and Glenn (Cera), his long-time friend who’s settled into domestic life. On an impromptu road trip from Los Angeles to Sacramento, their past comes into focus and questions their future. Erskine will play Rickey’s wife, Tallie, and Stewart is Glenn’s wife, Rosie.
Also among cast are wrestler-turned-author and screenwriter AJ Mendez (Blade Of The 47 Ronin), Iman Karram (Daft State) and Rosalind Chao (Mulan). Mendez and Karram will play best friends and ex-professional fighters who help teach Rickey and Glenn about their own relationship.
Producers are Bee-Hive Production’s Stephen Braun, The Wonder Company’s Eric B. Fleischman and Chris Abernathy, Sam Grey, along with Angarano and co-writer Smith.
Angarano told us: “We feel grateful and very excited to make a movie like Sacramento. Chris Smith and I started writing this film years ago, after a pilot of ours didn’t get picked up. We’re honored to be working with this wildly talented cast and crew led by Stephen at Bee-Hive who is not only a great partner, but a true collaborator. It’s already been quite a journey but we’re finally ready to go make a movie.”
Verve Ventures and UTA Independent Group are co-repping worldwide rights. Motus Studios is no longer aboard.
This Is Us and I’m Dying Up Here star Angarano will next play Robert Serber, “the intellectual midwife at the birth of the atomic bomb”, in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, and he will star in Kevin Costner’s western Horizon for New Line.
Kristen Stewart is in post on A24 thriller Love Lies Bleeding and is in pre-production on Sontag.
Juno and Superbad actor Cera is currently starring opposite Amy Schumer in Hulu series Life & Beth and will next be seen in Warner Bros’ Barbie. Pen15 co-creator and star Erskine is a currently adapting Leila Slimani’s novel, The Perfect Nanny, for HBO as a limited series in which she will star alongside Nicole Kidman. She is currently filming Prime Video’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith series reboot opposite Donald Glover.
Angarano and Stewart previously starred together in 2004 drama Speak.
Angarano is repped by UTA, Anonymous, and JTWAMM. Stewart is repped by WME and McKuin, Frankel, Whitehead. Cera is repped by APA, Thruline and Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Adler, Feldman and Clark. Erskine is repped by Gersh, Mosaic and Hansen Jacobson Teller Hoberman Newman Warren Richman Rush Kaller Gellman Meigs and Fox. Bee-Hive is repped by Verve.
Kristen Stewart is to play US writer, philosopher and political activist Susan Sontag in an upcoming feature for UK-Australia production outfit Brouhaha Entertainment, with US filmmaker Kirsten Johnson to direct.
Four chapters in the tumultuous life of the celebrated and controversial 20th century intellectual will be depicted in the drama, which is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Sontag: Her Life by Ben Moser. The feature has the working title of Sontag.
New Yorker Sontag, who passed away in 2004, is known for her widely influential critical works such as Against Interpretation, On Photography and Illness As Metaphor, as well as fictional works including In America. She travelled to and wrote about areas of conflict, from the Vietnam War to the Siege of Sarajevo. Sontag also attracted controversy over statements on white civilisation in the western world, the 9/11 New York terrorist attacks and over accusations of plagiarism.
US actor Stewart, who previously depicted Princess Diana in Spencer, is president of the international jury at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, where filming will begin for the project.
Filmmaker Johnson is known for her documentary work. She worked as a cinematographer on Laura Poitras’ documentaries The Oath – for which she won the Sundance cinematography award – and Oscar winner Citizenfour.
Her directing credits include Sundance premieres Dick Johnson Is Dead, a personal story about her father who suffered from dementia for which she won a Sundance special jury award and Primetime Emmy for directing, and Cameraperson, a memoir of her decades of shooting documentary footage around the world.
“We’re using Berlin as a moment to kick off the project and do documentary footage of Kristen as the head of the jury and talking to her about how she’s going to become Sontag,” said Gabrielle Tana, who co-founded Brouhaha Entertainment in 2021 and is producer on the project. “It will be a drama, but with a documentary aspect to it. Kirsten has a wonderful approach to storytelling, and this is reflective of that, so she will use documentary in it.”
Johnson will co-write the project with Lisa Kron as well as direct, and the feature plans to shoot this year across California, New York, Paris and Sarajevo.
Brouhaha Entertainment was founded in 2021 by UK-based Tana and Australia’s Troy Lum and Andrew Mason. Their slate includes Anton Corbijn’s Switzerland, in which Helen Mirren will play celebrated author Patricia Highsmith. FilmNation will launch sales at this month’s European Film Market.
HANGING OUT WITH Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, and Phoebe Bridgers — a.k.a. boygenius — you learn a lot about three of the most fascinating people in rock. For instance: Baker calls her barbecue the best $400 she’s ever spent. Dacus is currently watching The Sopranos for the first time. Bridgers loves Christian-era Bob Dylan. And Kristen Stewart is directing three music videos for the band.
Kristen Stewart has boarded Love Lies Bleeding, a romantic thriller set in the world of bodybuilding that will be directed by Rose Glass, the filmmaker behind the acclaimed British film Saint Maud.
A24, which just released the multiverse action movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, is backing the movie along with Film4, the feature division of the U.K.’s Channel 4.
Glass co-wrote the script with Weronika Tofilska, with sources saying the story is centered on the extreme qualities it takes to succeed in the competitive world of bodybuilding.
Stewart is playing the co-lead of the story, the protective lover of a female bodybuilder.
The companies are, at this stage, describing the project as a romance fueled by ego, desire and the American dream.
A24 will produce alongside Andrea Cornwell for Lobo Films and Oliver Kassman for Escape Plan Productions.
Film4 developed the film alongside the filmmakers and will co-finance with A24. The filmmakers are hoping to cast the lead as authentically as possible, with the search currently underway.
A24 will handle the global release of the film. The company is coming off the March opening of X, the new horror from Ti West, and last week’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, from the directing duo known as the Daniels. The movies have generated outstanding reviews and are seen as a welcome influx of original movies into theaters.
On tap next is Men, the latest movie from Ex Machina filmmaker Alex Garland, in May, followed by the whimsical adventure Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, which is out in June.
Glass directed several shorts before bursting onto the feature scene with Maud, the 2019 psychological horror centered on a nun obsessed with a patient. The movies earned her the Douglas Hickox Award for best debut director at the British Independent Film Awards, on top of 15 other nominations. It was also nominated for a BAFTA for outstanding British film of the year as well as outstanding debut by a British writer, director or producer. She is repped by Casarotto Ramsay.
Stewart landed her first Oscar nomination earlier this year for portraying future Princess of Wales Diane Spencer in the biopic Spencer, directed by Pablo Larrain. Prior to that, she starred in the holiday rom-com Happiest Season. She is repped by WME and McKuin Frankel.
Update: 'Love Lies Bleeding' is scheduled to start filming in Albuquerque, New Mexico US, from 13 June to 1 August 2022 (via Prod Weekly thanks to TeamK_1)
CJ Romero: "Did you really think I’d let her do this alone? SURPRISE So beyond stoked to join forces with the extremely talented team over at @scout.productions [production company confirmed it on their instagram account] on this project!! Stay tuned……."
Kristen Stewart's dog doesn't care about movie stars. All that Cole — a rescue mutt ecstatically flinging her stocky little body across the lawn of a vast Malibu estate on this broiling early-September afternoon — wants to do is chase the grubby tennis ball that the actress obligingly keeps tossing between clicks for EW's cover shoot. She's certainly the only one here (and likely far beyond this rarefied zip code) to be blissfully unaware of the oceans of real and digital ink spilled over her owner in the past dozen or so years — the relentless, reflexive obsession with Stewart's roles and clothes and love life, the color of her hair and the state of her career.
It's tempting to draw a line from the 31-year-old Los Angeles native to the late Princess Diana, whom she portrays in Spencer (in theaters Nov. 5): two young women, pinned like butterflies beneath the smothering bell jar of celebrity. But the movie, helmed by lauded Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín (Jackie), is much trickier and more ambiguous than that — an intoxicating art-house swoon of ghost queens and scarecrows and tumbling pearls, pegged to a central performance all the more remarkable for its real-world nuance and vulnerability. (Following the world premiere at the Venice Film Festival the first week of September, talk of a sure-thing Best Actress nod quickly reached fever pitch.)
Stewart, at least, is reluctant to overplay any parallels to her muse: "I mean, I've tasted... I've come near these sort of manic levels of fame and intrusion," she admits a few days later at a hotel lounge in Telluride, Colo., after the film's North American bow there, gamely inhaling a cappuccino to ease her Italian jet lag while bossa nova versions of Adele and Bon Jovi songs tinkle incongruously through the high-altitude air. "Not intrusion," she quickly corrects herself. "That implies that I've been stolen from in this violent way. I have experienced people kind of wanting to come in, but there is no comparison to this particular woman, in terms of that fervent desire to have her and know her."
Indeed it's startling nearly 25 years after her death, the degree to which the Princess of Wales endures in pop culture — the currency of countless books and fashion bloggers and, perhaps most famously, the latest season of Netflix's prestige royal soap opera The Crown. (Stewart is a fan: "I watched it probably in one night. I think [actress Emma Corrin] did a really beautiful job. I mean, not to say that my opinion matters at all!" she adds, laughing. "But I loved her in it, truly.") Only 7 when Diana died, Stewart hardly considered herself among the faithful. But when Larraín reached out and offered her the part, "I knew even before I read the script. I was like, 'You're not going to say no to this, because who would you be in that case?' I absolutely would have felt like such a coward. Especially given that I'm such an outsider. I'm not from the U.K., I don't have any particular investment in the royal family. So I was kind of this really clean slate, and then could absorb her in a way that actually felt very instinctive, you know?"
"We all know a lot about Diana, whether you are more or less interested," says the Santiago-born director, 45, of his deliberately unconventional approach to the story. "You have to work with that, and you know that. She's already an icon, so you need to start from that base. And then we go and choose a very precise moment of her life that could define who she was in a very simple way, or at least try to... To me, it's a very universal Greek tragedy in its shape and basis, a classic structure. That simple element is what I think we were attracted to."
The screenplay by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, Allied) sets its parameters accordingly, confining the timeline to an unspecified Christmas holiday at the Queen's country estate, Sandringham, most likely within a year or two of Diana's final rupture with the House of Windsor in 1992. The princess has defiantly driven herself there alone, the first of many minor rebellions that will play out over the next three days of forced-festive pageantry in myriad ways — some of them almost comically small for a woman of such supposed privilege and power. "It is a fact that sometimes she just didn't want to come to dinner," Stewart says. "And if that's all you've got, if you're backed into a corner and the only way to bare your teeth is to change your clothes or not come to eat... If you're so voiceless and never listened to and never asked any questions, you're going to do things in order to be heard that are very easy to judge."
And judge they do: from a sniffy, faintly derisive Prince Charles (Jack Farthing) to the chambermaids, pages, and guards who scurry past, taking note of every feint and misdemeanor. Her lone allies, seemingly, are a devoted dresser (The Shape of Water's Sally Hawkins), a sympathetic chef (erstwhile Mission: Impossible villain Sean Harris), and her own young sons, William and Harry (played by Jack Nielen and Freddie Spry). Even before she pulls into Sandringham's grand driveway she's begun to spiral, her emotional state exacerbated by the proximity of her shuttered childhood home — a hulking, haunted presence located just yards away.
But after years of enduring the royal gauntlet, Diana is not without her own bag of tricks; Stewart quietly nails the dipped chin, widened eyes, and soft, plummy cadences behind which the princess often concealed a steely will. "She's such a strange combination of things that don't seem to go together," the actress says. "The power she pulls into every room is probably what was so upsetting for people who wanted a sort of demure and quiet figurehead.... She was just tactile and warm and kind of buzzing with fragility that needed to be pacified and salved."
Indeed, beneath the couture swirl of jewels and gowns and netted hats, she moves through this cloistered world like a walking wound: heartsick, furious, desperately lonely. Though Stewart has been identified mostly with contemporary roles, Larraín saw qualities in her, he says, that recalled another era entirely. "It's a combination of something that feels elegant and truthful and strange and enigmatic and magnetic," he says. "All these spaces [at Sandringham], most of the furniture and the rugs and the curtains and the fabrics and the colors, the lighting, it's been like that for centuries. But if you take those elements out, it's a little bit out of time. The main element for that timeless feeling was Kristen."
As much as the film's narrative tends less toward traditional biopic structures than what Stewart calls a "distillation" and "a long tone poem" — one that includes, among other things, a soup-related hallucination and the ghost of Anne Boleyn — her performance is still rooted in real, painful truths. To find that essence, the actress leaned heavily into research, working with famed dialect coach William Conacher (who also trained Corrin and Naomi Watts for their respective screen Spencers) and immersing herself in piles of Diana lore.
Even then, she says, "there are contradictory materials from the horse's mouth. She doesn't always say the same thing in every interview, you know? There was a fickle nature, obviously, to a lot of the facts. She is, very sadly and very ironically, one of the most unknowable people in history, when all she wanted was to just be closer to people and bare herself." Whether or not the result is note-perfect, "there was something just in absorbing her completely over the last six months leading up to this. I knew that I had hit some kind of elemental energy. If people have a lot to say about it not being a perfect impression, that's so okay with me."
One fight Stewart wouldn't win: using her real hair. That bit, she concedes, was inevitable: "If it wasn't a wig, we would have had so much less time to shoot," she says of the four months spent on location in Germany and England earlier this year, with a stripped-down mid-pandemic crew. "And we were f---ing sprinting. This was not padded or luxe in any way. We were balls to the wall, gunning through it. Which you can feel in the movie 10 or 15 minutes in— once it gets up and starts going, it doesn't stop, it barrels. It felt that way to make it, too." (Indeed, Knight's script is so streamlined that nothing landed on the cutting-room floor, Larraín confirms, beyond small trims in dialogue.)
Though Stewart is only just entering her 30s, her career path reads more like a marathon than a sprint: Born into the business — her mom worked as a script supervisor for years, her dad as an assistant director mostly for TV, and her older brother is a grip — "I inherited a real love of the circus," she says. "My parents worked constantly, but I never felt that they were absent. I was always rifling through their bags for craft service and just wondering, 'What did you do all day?'" At 9, she got her first taste as an extra in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, but confesses, "I was really not good in commercial auditions at that age. I was not the type for it at all. And it was physically, viscerally painful to be criticized for not being able to dance in pigtails."
That began to change with her casting as Jodie Foster's daughter in the taut 2002 David Fincher thriller Panic Room; a string of roles — mostly in small Sundance-y indies — followed, before a certain iridescent-vampire franchise went nuclear. Post-Twilight, she found more multiplex success with 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman and won praise for supporting turns in low-key Oscar bait like Still Alice, but it was her work with Gallic auteur Olivier Assayas on the moody metaphysical dramas Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper that seemed to mark a turning point. (Stewart remains the only American actress to ever take home a César, the French equivalent of an Oscar, for Sils Maria.)
To promote Shopper in 2017, she hosted Saturday Night Live for the first time. That episode — in which she crisply eviscerated the 45th president's baffling obsession with her dating history, made an entire nation rethink their relationship to Totino's Pizza Rolls, and declared, "I'm like, so gay, dude," to wild cheers — felt like a revelation for a star many seem to picture as a sort of celebrity sphinx, a too-cool-for-school enigma wreathed in kohl eyeliner and ennui. "I think sometimes you get lucky. There are certain magic episodes," she says, deflecting credit. "But it's so funny, this pervasive idea that I'm just this f---ing little freak. Because I think my friends think I'm funny! I mean, I crack them up all the time. I just got jobs that weren't like that."
In person, actually, she's fantastically uncool — an elbow squeezer and quick laugher, wry and goofy and so earnestly, f-bombingly sincere, even in the face of questions she has undoubtedly answered to infinity, that she makes most actresses' press tours feel like plastic-wrapped performance art. (She seems to live an actual life off screen, too — giving off the energy of a friend who would happily spend a lost afternoon playing darts with you at a bar, but also be a conscientious member of your book club.)
She let some of that more playful persona come through in a 2019 Charlie's Angels reboot and last year's queer Christmas rom-com Happiest Season, which became an unlikely hit on Hulu. The actress is not unaware of how Spencer's reception may change her ranking in the Hollywood bracket game, and not ashamed to admit she cares: "You want to win, we're all animals," she says matter-of-factly. "Artists want to engage with the world and have larger conversations. Even though it doesn't seem like I'm somebody who wants to be extremely famous, I still want this conversation to be expansive.... I used to be really intentionally the opposite of precious in terms of choosing projects. For a minute there I was like, 'I'll do f---ing anything!' And honestly, it was a good place to be for a minute. But I think now I'm going to be a little more careful. I think I have a better nose for what's going to be fruitful for me personally, as an experience, if not necessarily what's going to thrive out in the world."
On deck next is a David Cronenberg film called Crimes of the Future costarring Viggo Mortensen, and a high-concept sci-fi drama opposite Minari's Steven Yeun. ("It's actually a love story between a satellite and a buoy; it's hard to explain. I hope I don't botch it, because it's a really revolutionarily written script.") There's also a long-gestating adaptation of The Chronology of Water, based on the harrowing 2011 memoir by Lidia Yuknavitch, that she plans to direct, but wants someone else to star in. ("I can't wait to throw somebody into, like, the deepest, coldest, scariest water and see what happens to them," she grins wickedly.)
It's hard not to think of that little girl who couldn't vamp in pigtails at auditions when Stewart speaks of one of Spencer's most indelible scenes — a dizzying montage in which Diana whirls across the estate in a sort of mad, feverish trance, trailing tutus and satin and, at one point, even the meringued pouf of her own wedding gown. Larraín kept a wardrobe rack on standby, and a playlist he would choose from at will: Miles Davis, LCD Soundsystem, Talking Heads. "At the end of every single day," she remembers, "there was 30 minutes of extra time to pick an outfit and for Pablo to pick a song in a room and just go. He said, 'Because we're not doing everything chronologically, we're not doing a biopic, this is your chance to tell the whole story. All you need to do is inhabit the space and listen to the music and carry her with you, and everything you know about being in this place, and just see what happens. See if it comes out.'
"The first time, I didn't want to do it. I'm such a control freak I was like, 'I need to know what I'm doing. I want to be prepared for what I'm doing!' But I came down these stairs, and I know it sounds so silly and esoteric, but it felt so f---ing spiritual and so spooky, and I was so overwhelmed by the feeling of her. And I don't mean like ghosty stuff. I just mean everything she's made me think and feel, and it all just kind of happened in a moment. I was like, 'You were so right. You're so right about this.'" She kept dancing.
Kinda Blue
When director Pablo Larrain first approached Kristen Stewart for the role of Princess Diana in Spencer, she'd only seen his 2016 arthouse sensation Jackie. But "the confidence in which he said he wanted to do it with me," she says. "His ego had nothing to do with it. He really laid himself out. I haven't even read the [script], and I was like, 'Absolutely.'"
Blond Ambition
I think he was kind of nervous about my research consumption," she admits of Larrain, whose vision involved a more abstract and impressionistic take on the late Princess of Wales. Still, Stewart threw herself into the deep end: "I knew I had the ability to pick and choose and really get a well-rounded impression and not be sort of laid in, or tripped up or overwhelmed."
Like A Boss
From the outset, Larrain had faith in her interpretation: "I mean, I'm paraphrasing and probably oversimplifying," she recalls, "but he would say, 'If you get one or two little things right, just be yourself from there on. If you just get the accent right, and the wig looks good, you don't need.
Splendour in the Grass
Still, Stewart says, "Had I not read everyone's opinion and looked at every picture and just sort of felt the loss of her every day — because she feels so alive in every picture, and she really does, like bust out of every interview — I wouldn't have cared the same way. I wouldn't have had the emotional or physical artillery to bring to set."
Walk the Line
Yes, Stewart has seen The Crown. (And loved it). But she likes to think that Diana would have appreciated seeing more than one version of herself on screen: "She was so obsessed with connection and people, and she really had such an overwhelming humanity, I think that she believed.... Well, let me put it this way: It's more fun for me to believe that she would believe in a sort of multiplicity of art, and that she still exists [in part] because we're all obsessed with her."
In the Slipstream
"I don't know whether or not I would prefer to be pre- or post-internet," Stewart admits, of the way fame has evolved since Diana's time. "If you feel isolated and marginal or misunderstood, it's very easy now to connect with people that are like you. But having said that, you're then also exposed. And I don't even mean celebrities, just anyone that uses the internet — kids, young girls that are f---ing sensitive and their brains are still developing — everyone's open to extreme criticism. But at the same time, we're also open to feeling the alleviation of connection."
Earning her Stripes
Stewart was still a teenager herself when Twilight fame turned her into sudden, constant fodder for the tabloids. "It made me a stronger person," she acknowledges. "And when I say stronger, I don't mean harder. Having said that, no, it was not fun. But I'm not mad at anyone for any of it, do you know what I mean? I kind of understand all of it. And not that I think that I'm in a position to be resentful of the spot that I'm in. It's just that I don't pay a lot of credence to it."
Back to the Garden
"This is all very ambiguous and weird to talk about," she goes on, of her own celebrity. "But I kind of was able to... If you don't look at it, it doesn't exist. It's this ephemeral idea, actually. Luckily, I kept working, so it was fine. If it had actually affected my job, it would have really been a bummer. But I never had a public Instagram, I've never really interacted personally with it. It's only ever broken through while I'm doing interviews, promoting movies, talking to people that write these articles."
Coming Up Roses
"I did indies in between each Twilight movie," the L.A. native says of her career trajectory, which has ranged in recent years from the acclaimed French meta-drama Clouds of Sils Maria , for which she won the French equivalent of an Oscar, to a leading role in 2019's big, shiny Charlie's Angels reboot. "And I'd always [say] 'Oh, I'm just instinctively navigating my career." And it is true, but there have been a few things that I've chosen because I'm like, 'Yeah, maybe we do a big thing now.' Just to see if it works. And sometimes it doesn't!"
Unchained Melody
"Like everyone, Stewart went through her own pandemic phases: "I got very drunk," she says of her early days in lockdown. "Then I stopped drinking, got really good at pool. and read a lot of news, back when we were all just stress reading the news and couldn't focus on anything else.
A Novel Perspective
"Something about being locked inside without knowing how long it was going to be actually kind of paralyzed me a little bit," she admits. Scripts — and books — helped open her world back up: "Once I started working, I started reading again. I blew through the Anne Boleyn books. I read Sapiens finally, which was sitting on my nightstand for f---ng five years."
Into the Light
"Once I was forced to step out again," Stewart says, "The perspective I gained from that locked-in feeling, I had this really beautiful hunger. I almost feel like I went to sleep and opened my eyes and was five years older and smarter and just more engaged." And then? She smiles. "And then I got to start working on Diana."
Photography by Lauren Dukoff for EW. Look 1: Dorothee Schumacher beige top and trouser, Garrett Leight sunglasses. Look 2: St. John's blue sweater bra and legging. Look 3: Stella McCartney pink biker shorts, white blazer, and sequined dress; Christian Louboutin pumps; Garrett Leight sunglasses. Look 4: Peter Dundas pink and white suit, Stella McCartney pink lace bike shorts. Look 5: Fa Noel pink slip dress.
Neon and Serendipity Point Films have set a summer production start in Athens, Greece for Crimes of the Future, the David Cronenberg-written and -directed sci-fi thriller that has locked Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart as its stars, with Scott Speedman, Welket Bungué, Don McKellar and Lihi Kornowski also starring.
This is the first original sci-fi script by Cronenberg since 1999’s eXistenZ. It sounds just as ambitious, taking a deep dive into the not-so-distant future where humankind is learning to adapt to its synthetic surroundings. This evolution moves humans beyond their natural state and into a metamorphosis, altering their biological makeup. While some embrace the limitless potential of trans-humanism, others attempt to police it. Either way, “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome” is spreading fast. Saul Tenser is a beloved performance artist who has embraced Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, sprouting new and unexpected organs in his body. Along with his partner Caprice, Tenser has turned the removal of these organs into a spectacle for his loyal followers to marvel at in real-time theatre. But with both the government and a strange subculture taking note, Tenser is forced to consider what would be his most shocking performance of all.
“I have unfinished business with the future,” Cronenberg understated.
“To work with David Cronenberg is to embark on a journey exploring terrain where no one has gone before,” said Robert Lantos, who’s producing. “Each of our collaborations has been an exhilarating adventure and David’s unwavering vision is what real cinema is all about.”
The film has been in the mix for some time, gaining attention in that it marks the fourth teaming of Cronenberg with Mortensen, including the terrific films A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. It’s real now, with Neon set to release in the U.S, as the film joins the distributor’s growing slate of recent acquisitions that include Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee, the Ryan Gosling-starrer The Actor and Pablo Larraín’s Spencer.
MK2│Mile End will distribute Crimes of the Future in Canada; Rocket Science is handling international sales.
Crimes of the Future is also the fourth collaboration between Lantos and Cronenberg, who teamed on Eastern Promises, eXistenZ and Crash. Steve Solomos is co-producer, and Panos Papahadzis is co-producer for Athens-based Argonauts Productions. Executive producers include Joe Iacono, Thorsten Schumacher, Peter Touche, Christelle Conan, Aida Tannyan, Victor Loewy and Victor Hadida. Bonnie Do and Laura Lanktree are associate producers.
Aside from Mortensen and Lantos, Cronenberg has surrounded himself with longtime collaborators that include production designer Carol Spier (Crash, Dead Ringers), and Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore (A History of Violence).
Cronenberg is repped by WME; Mortensen is repped by Rawlins Company, UTA and GGSSC; Seydoux is repped by UTA, Agence Adequat and United Agents; and Stewart by WME and McKuin Frankel Whitehead. Speedman, whose credits include Lena Dunham’s Sharp Stick and Netflix’s You, is repped by CAA. Serendipity Point Films is repped by Brecheen Feldman Breimer Silver & Thompson.
Crimes of the Future is a Serendipity Point Films and Argonauts co-production. This Canada-Greece co-production is produced in association with Ingenious Media, Coficine and Telefilm Canada, with the support of EKOME.
Kristen Stewart: Art that is born of restriction has a way of becoming itself in a surprising and cosmic sort of way and short films by nature don’t have to abide by any rules which really opens up the idea of what a movie can do. I was so grateful for and liberated by this idea. It was a huge gift to be encouraged to make something out of this strange nothingness. I hope this series inspires people to do the same.
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“Jackie” filmmaker Pablo Larrain may be set to direct Kristen Stewart in Lady Diana film “Spencer,” but the pair will first collaborate in a new collection of short films for Netflix. (Watch the trailer above.)
Filmed during COVID-19 and across various states of global lockdown, “Homemade” unites 17 leading filmmakers in a compendium of short films — available to watch individually as five to seven-minute shorts or as one long feature — that captures the shared experience of quarantine. The project is helmed by Larrain, his brother and creative partner Juan de Dios Larrain under the pair’s Fabula banner, and Lorenzo Mieli, CEO of Fremantle-backed Italian outfit The Apartment, for which “Homemade” is its inaugural project.
“Personal Shopper” and “Charlie’s Angels” star Stewart marks her directorial follow-up to her 2017 short “Come Swim” with a short filmed in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Maggie Gyllenhaal contributes a film out of Vermont — the “Kindergarten Teacher” actor’s directorial debut ahead of her star-studded film “The Lost Daughter.”
Other directors include Paolo Sorrentino (“The Great Beauty”) out of Rome, Italy; Ladj Ly (“Les Misérables”) from Clichy Montfermeil, France; Rachel Morrison (“Black Panther”) from Los Angeles, U.S.; Naomi Kawase (“True Mothers”) from Nara, Japan; Nadine Labaki and Khaled Mouzanar (“Capernaum”) from Beirut, Lebanon; Gurdiner Chadha (“Blinded By the Light”) from London, U.K.; and Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”). (For a full list of directors, please see below.)
“For once in our careers, this wasn’t about money, agencies, lawyers or the Hollywood structure,” Juan de Dios Larrain tells Variety. “This was a simple idea of [conveying] one message in five to seven minutes, and the idea was to give that message without any pressure; it was totally open. We asked only for [each film’s] rating to be general, and not only for older audiences.”
Pablo Larrain notes that the underlying message around “Homemade” is about “adversity, and how we are all from different countries, cultures and circumstances, but for a very unique moment of humanity, we’re all sharing very similar circumstances in different contexts.”
Based out of Santiago, Chile, the “No” director notes that the experience of coronavirus continues to vary wildly across the globe. Chile saws its “very worst moment of the pandemic” on Monday, according to Larrain, while in Europe there is marked progress despite fears of a second spike. “We’re going through different situations, but there are many things we have in common. That was the heart of this and the challenge we faced.”
Directors were instructed to use only equipment found at home, with the focus ranging from a glimpse into their working lives — Pablo Larrain’s film, for example, focuses on a conversation via Zoom call — to more narrative meditations on an unprecedented moment in history.
Plot details for all films remain largely under wraps, but Gyllenhaal’s short — which appears to star her partner, actor Peter Sarsgaard — will “surprise the whole world,” promises Pablo Larrain. “All shorts have something [special] but Maggie’s is very particular.”
“Each director has done a completely different thing,” explains Teresa Moneo, director of original films for Netflix. “We have put them together thematically. Some were very clearly personal stories and some were more narrative or fantastical or funny. We tried to give them some kind of organization…so they’ve been arranged thematically.”
The executive admits it was a race against time to ensure the concept — conceived collectively in March by Mieli and the Larrain brothers and then presented to Netflix — was still timely upon release.
It was intense work, says Moneo. “Intense in that it was all happening live, in front of our eyes, so we all had to pivot and join forces very quickly to make sure we had this within a time where it made sense to go out,” she adds.
“It’s been a real alliance among all our groups within Netflix to make sure everything is subtitled, and all the potential technical glitches are out of the way.”
Pablo Larrain describes the experience of “Homemade” as a “very strange, beautiful, unique film festival” where different voices have convened to tell a story in a “planetary exercise.” Mieli further underlines that the project looks to “show a broad variety of things from all over the world, done in exactly the same conditions, at the same time.”
“Homemade” will debut on Netflix on June 30, and a donation in honor of each filmmaker will be made from Netflix’s Hardship Fund to third parties and non-profit groups providing emergency relief for out-of-work cast and crew.
• Ladj Ly (“Les Misérables”) – short filmed in Clichy Montfermeil (France)
• Paolo Sorrentino (“The Great Beauty,” “The New Pope”) – short filmed in Rome (Italy)
• Rachel Morrison (“Black Panther,” “Mudbound”) – short filmed in Los Angeles (U.S.)
• Pablo Larraín (“El Club,” “Jackie”) – short filmed in Santiago (Chile)
• Rungano Nyoni (“Kuuntele: I am not a witch”) – short filmed in Lisbon (Portugal)
• Natalia Beristáin (“She does not want to sleep alone”) – short filmed in Mexico City (Mexico)
• Sebastian Schipper (“Victoria,” “Roads”) – short filmed in Berlin (Germany)
• Naomi Kawase (“True Mothers,” “Sweet Bean”) – short filmed in Nara (Japan)
• David Mackenzie (“Hell or High Water,” “Outlaw King”) – short filmed in Glasgow (Scotland)
• Maggie Gyllenhaal (“The Kindergarten Teacher,” “The Honourable Woman”) – short filmed in Vermont (U.S.)
• Nadine Labaki & Khaled Mouzanar (“Caramel,” “Capernaum”) – short filmed in Beirut (Lebanon)
• Antonio Campos (“The Devil All The Time”) – short filmed in Springs, New York City (U.S.)
• Johnny Ma (“Old Stone,” “To live to sing”) – short filmed in San Sebastian del Oeste, Jalisco (Mexico)
• Kristen Stewart (“Clouds of Sils Maria,” “Come Swim”) – short filmed in Los Angeles (U.S.)
• Gurinder Chadha (“Bend It Like Beckham,” “Blinded by the Light”) – short filmed in London (U.K.)
• Sebastián Lelio (“Gloria Bell,” “A Fantastic Woman”) – short filmed in Santiago (Chile)
• Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” “The Bad Batch”) – short filmed in Los Angeles (U.S.)
Pablo Larraín is set to direct and Kristen Stewart to play Princess Diana in Spencer, a drama that shapes up to be a hot package for the virtual Cannes Market. The Steven Knight-scripted film covers a critical weekend in the early ‘90s, when Diana decided her marriage to Prince Charles wasn’t working, and that she needed to veer from a path that put her in line to one day be queen. The drama takes place over three days, in one of her final Christmas holidays in the House of Windsor in their Sandringham estate in Norfolk, England. Production is expected to begin in early 2021.
The package will be unveiled to buyers at the virtual Cannes Market by CAA Media Finance and FilmNation Entertainment. CAA Media Finance arranged the financing and will make the U.S. distribution deal with Endeavor Content, while FilmNation Entertainment represents international rights.
The film will be produced by Larraín, director of films that include Jackie and Neruda, along with Fabula partner Juan de Dios, Jonas Dornbach, Janine Jackowski and Paul Webster. Knight’s script work includes Eastern Promises, Peaky Blinders, Locke and The Hundred-Foot Journey.
While growing up in Chile didn’t make Larraín as obsessed as many were in Diana and Charles’ storybook wedding, or the endless coverage as their high-profile union was frayed by the pressures of fame and the crown. But he grew up reading fairy tales literature, and sees this as the antithesis of that trope.
“We all grew up, at least I did in my generation, reading and understanding what a fairy tale is,” Larraín told Deadline. “Usually, the prince comes and finds the princess, invites her to become his wife and eventually she becomes queen. That is the fairy tale. When someone decides not to be the queen, and says, I’d rather go and be myself, it’s a big big decision, a fairy tale upside down. I’ve always been very surprised by that and thought it must have been very hard to do. That is the heart of the movie.
“How and why do you decide to do that? It’s a great universal story that can reach millions and millions of people, and that’s what we want to do. We want to make a movie that goes wide, connects with a worldwide audience that is interested in such a fascinating life.”
Stewart is an intriguing choice to play Diana. She got a taste of that fishbowl life borne of fame when she starred in the blockbuster Twilight Saga films, with press hounding her every move at a very young age. She eschewed that persona, and has refashioned herself as one of the most interesting and unpredictable actresses working mostly in independent films. Now she’ll play one of the most famous women in the world at her moment of great moment existential crisis.
“Kristen is one of the great actors around today,” Larraín said. “To do this well, you need something very important in film, which is mystery. Kristen can be many things, and she can be very mysterious and very fragile an ultimately very strong as well, which is what we need. The combination of those elements made me think of her. The way she responded to the script and how she is approaching the character, it’s very beautiful to see. I think she’s going to do something stunning and intriguing at the same time. She is this force of nature.
“I’ve seen movies from Kristen that are so diverse it’s incredible, showing different layers and her diversity and strength as an actress,” he said. “We’re very happy to have her, she’s very committed. As a filmmaker, when you have someone who can hold such a weight, dramatic and narrative weight just with her eyes, then you have the strong lead who can deliver what we are looking for.”
The film won’t deal with Diana’s tragic death after she left that palace life, but will examine the fraying of the relationship with her husband, and her ferocious love for her sons Prince William and Prince Harry. Latter married actress Meghan Markle and made a decision similar to the one made by his mother while he was just a child.
“I’ve always been intrigued and fascinated by the Royal Family and how things are in that culture, which we don’t have where I come from,” Larraín said. “Diana is such a powerful icon, where millions and millions of people, not just women, but many people around the world felt empathy toward her in her life. We decided to get into a story about identity, and around how a woman decides somehow, not to be the queen. She’s a woman who, in the journey of the movie, decides and realizes that she wants to be the woman she was before she met Charles.
“It’s about finding herself, about understanding that possibly the most important thing for her is to be well, and to be with herself and by herself,” Larraín explained. “That’s why the movie is called Spencer, which is the family name she had before she met Charles. It’s very contained, set over a few days in Sandringham. They spent Christmas there for many years and that’s where we set the movie in the early ‘90s, around 1992, we’re not specific. It’s Christmas Eve, Christmas and Boxing Day, three days, very contained. We get to understand what it is she wants and what she will do.
“It’s a very energetic and beautiful script by Steven Knight, whose work I have admired for years. It’s incredible and captures what I have always found and that is an enormous amount of beauty in the power of Diana. When she had the stage of the world and what she had to say in her own story and how strong she could be when she needed to transform herself into something different, to find her own path. It’s a romantic story of a woman going through difficult times who finds the light and the solution.
“She died years after where our story is set and so we don’t deal with that,” Larraín said. “It’s only three days of her life and in that very small amount of time, you’re able to get into a wider, bigger perspective of who she was. We all know her fate, what happened to her, and we don’t need to go there. We’ll stay in this more intimate space where she could express where she wants to go and who she wants to be.
“The key is how she discovers during the process of the movie that what she really needs to do is be who she wants to be,” he said. “And by that, it doesn’t mean she needs to be next to anyone, to be part of anything, but herself and her own children. Diana was many things, but chief among them, she was a great mother. This is the story of a woman who understands the most important thing for a woman in her life is her own children.
“We believe that this is a movie that could create interest around the planet,” Larraín said. “This is a beloved, iconic women and we have everything in front of us to do a beautiful movie and we are working very hard to get it made.”
Stewart is repped by WME and McKuin Frankel; Larraín by CAA and Management 360.
