Last summer Leos Carax’s long-awaited Annette was finally birthed into the world. As delightfully strange and singular as one would expect a musical written by Ron Mael and Russell Mael of the Sparks to be, it also thankfully will not be the last cinematic creation from the band.
Focus Features, who released Edgar Wright’s documentary The Sparks Brothers, is now reuniting with the Maels for a new project titled X Crucior. While there are no specific details yet on the “musical epic,” the duo will be writing and executive producing the original project and Focus’ Kiska Higgs will oversee production on behalf of the studio. Staying as prolific as ever, Sparks will release their 27th studio album in 2023, following 2020’s A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip and, of course, the Annette album.
“We think it’s a modern musical and something that has intentions of being something special and unique and really bold and singular and not having many comparisons of where it kind of fits in movies or musicals,” Russell told us last year speaking about Annette. “Most people have gotten that, and the ones that don’t… we can’t change people’s minds. We think, maybe, people’s expectations of what movies are supposed to be… well, it is a demanding movie. A lot of times, we think people are lazy if they don’t understand everything, or the first half-hour they don’t know where the film is headed—well, it’s intentionally that way. Yeah, you might not understand. Stick with it for the next hour-and-a-half and you’ll see where it’s headed. But we’re really proud of it and proud so many people have responded so favorably. We’re in the right area.”