One of the best horror films to come out of the last decade was 2017’s Revenge, directed by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, and it looks like we now know what her next film will be. Deadline reports that Fargeat will be directing The Substance for Universal Pictures and Working Title Films from a script she produced, with Demi Moore and Maid’s Margaret Qualley starring.
Neither actress is really known for horror, but Qualley is no stranger to playing eerie characters, as she was part of the Manson cult family in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. It will be interesting to see what kind of roles they will both play, as not much else is known about the project at this time, but Deadline reports it as an “explosive feminist take on body horror”.
This will have any horror fan buzzing as Revenge, which made its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017, was a feminist take on a rape revenge thriller. That film, which could also be described as “explosive”, was full of thought-provokingly horrific and psychologically challenging moments, with Fargeat’s breathtakingly surreal visual style only adding to Revenge’s jaw dropping madness. The film was universally loved by critics and there were some great bits of impressive body horror found throughout Revenge as well, which makes the possibilities of this director doing a full on body horror movie that much more exciting.
For all those reasons, it is hard to believe that Fargeat has not made a film since Revenge. That horrifying revenge story was only her first feature film, and The Substance will be her first big studio feature. Fargeat will also be producing the project with Working Title Films’ partners Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan. Universal’s Senior Vice President of Production Development, Erik Baiers, will oversee the project for the studio with Alexandra Loewy and Nicholas Royer serving as executive producers.
Like stated previously, a lot of this body horror experience is being kept under wraps, and it sounds like the film itself is still a ways out from being made. However, if this film is anything like Revenge, horror fans will be in for a sweetly traumatizing treat that will definitely be worth the wait.
via Collider