After crafting the best film of 2023 (and 2024, depending on your release calendar) with The Beast, Bertrand Bonello is prepping his next feature. While he was tight-lipped on details, he tells Variety, “It’s a little early to talk about it. It’s going to be very different. It’s going to be completely different. The writing is finished, and we’re going to start the casting process. I’m going to announce it once the casting is done. I hope to start shooting next September.” Speaking about how cinema is changing, he added, “This mutation is freaky and fascinating. If you don’t involve it in your creation, you’re out. It’s always an equilibrium. You must protect the past and welcome the future. If you just welcome the future, you’re lost in the movement. If you protect the past, you’re out now.”
The ever-prolific Takashi Miike has unveiled his next film, Sham, based on Masumi Fukuda’s 2007 book Fabrication: The Truth About The ‘Murder Teacher’ in Fukuoka. Screen Daily notes the film, which is already in post-production and will arrive in Japanese theaters in June, “details a court case against a teacher who was alleged to have bullied a student to the point of suicide until it came out at trial that the allegations were fabricated – but not before becoming a media sensation.” Before that, Miike’s next film, the martial arts feature Blue Fight, arrives in Japan early next year.
Nikyatu Jusu, director of the Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner Nanny, has been developing a number of projects, including a Night of the Living Dead sequel and a horror feature for Universal and Jordan Peel’s Monkeypaw. We can now add another to the pile as Deadline reports she’s working on The Fly, not a remake of David Cronenberg’s classic, itself a remake, but rather set in that universe. Set up at 20th Century Studios and Chernin Entertainment, there’s no additional details at this time, but hopefully we learn which project Jusu will settle on for her next feature soon.
Related to which, here’s a little exclusive: last month, Managing Editor Nick Newman talked to Cronenberg about his (excellent) new film The Shrouds and took an opportunity to inquire on the director’s never-made Fly sequel, written approximately 15 years ago and referred to as “a mediation on Fly-ness.” Cronenberg kindly elaborated upon that:
I think—I remember—Stuart Cornfeld, who was the line producer for Mel Brooks on the first Fly, he… a lot of it was 3D printing. That the teleportation would actually be a 3D printing of a human being. And they didn’t like that idea, whoever was at Fox or whatever. And then, much later—much later—Stuart got in touch with me and said, ‘Once again, you were very prophetic and it was such a mistake that we decided not to go with this.’ Because now, obviously, 3D printing—and 3D printing of flesh, biological material—is everywhere and it’s a reality. So it would’ve been right in zeitgeist. But they didn’t see it. And listen: that’s one of the things that happens. Especially if you’re working within a studio system—which I’ve barely done—you, the filmmaker, are limited to the imaginations of your studio people, your producers. Of course it’s your responsibility to make them see it, but you can only go so far writing a script. After that, anybody reading a script has to have some cinematic imagination. Because it’s not like a novel.
We learned earlier this year that Romain Gavras (Athena) had assembled quite the cast for his English-language debut Sacrifice, featuring Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Salma Hayek Pinault. The film, co-written by Gavras and Will Arbery, is set at a high-end charity gala which is raided by a violent group of radicals on a mystical quest to fulfill a prophecy. Now, Deadline reports Vincent Cassel, John Malkovich, Charli XCX, Sam Richardson, Yung Lean, Ambika Mod, Jade Croot, Jeremy O. Harris, and Miriam Silverman have joined the ensemble as production gets underway.
It’s a family affair for a new movie from the Sedgwick-Bacon household. Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon will direct and star in the comedy/horror Family Movie, also starring Travis Bacon and Sosie Bacon will also star. Scripted by Dan Beers (Premature), here’s the synopsis: “As cameras roll on their next low-budget slasher, an eclectic but tight knit family of filmmakers suddenly find themselves in a real-life horror movie when a body turns up on set. As the production spirals comically out of control, they realize the only solution to keep filming is to cover up the murder, by any means necessary… “
Lastly, in a small update, Nate Bargatze is moving into features as TriStar Pictures has acquired The Breadwinner, a pitch from Bargatze and Dan Lagana, with Bargatze attached to star. Currently in the writing stages, expect more details soon.