Few directors have had such noticeable career arcs as mad genius David Cronenberg. His early career was filled with paranoid science fiction that thrived on mutilated humans, and that aesthetic was left behind and a more thoughtful approach to the stranger plateaus of the human condition took over his work during the 1990s. And in the last ten years, he’s given us a handful of stories drowning in gritty realism as well as an uncharacteristic novel adaptation and the birth of psychoanalysis.
So of course it makes sense that his next project would have one of the stranger plotlines around, but as per usual, he’s got a great cast already involved. Variety reports Julianne Moore, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson and Sara Gadon have all signed on for Cronenberg’s thriller Maps to the Stars. If any of this sounds familiar to you, it’s because Cronenberg has been developing the film since 2006, and even last year it attracted the talents of Rachel Weisz and Viggo Mortensen, as well as Pattinson. But this time, it’s for real.
Cronenberg will be working with the screenplay written by Bruce Wagner, who is most known for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and a bunch of State of the Union episodes. It seems like it will have changed from the earlier 2006 draft, as that was referred to as a dark dramedy, and this is a thriller. In particular, the only plot points given out were that it’s a ghost story and the film will be a scathing attack on the celebrity-obsessed side of L.A. Because those two things go hand in ghostly hand.
This will be Moore and Cusack’s first time working with the director, but both Gadon and Pattinson were in Cosmopolis, while Gadon was also in A Dangerous Method.
Maps to the Stars is being co-financed by Entertainment One Films and Prospero Pictures, and will begin production in July, filming in Toronto and Los Angeles.
