With every new casting announcement on Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon, we learn a little more of its deranged premise. A horror set in the fashion world, its early descriptions lend it an edge of Lynch via way of Cronenberg. In short, it’s setting itself up to be a visual delight that will shake your morals loose at the same time.
Refn has himself described it as a “horror film about vicious beauty” and reports from various outlets indicate that it’s set to focus on “a group of supermodels going to extremes in their attempts to keep looking the way they do,” which will include the use of “voodoo and cannibalism.” Needless to say, The Neon Demon won’t receive a PG-13 rating based on those cultish activities its starry cast will likely get mixed up in. That ensemble so far includes Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Keanu Reeves and Abbey Lee. In amongst that roster are supermodels, former supermodels, aspiring supermodels, and presumably some occultists.
Per Deadline, Alessandro Nivola (Face/Off) has now signed on to star in the horror hybrid as a fashion impresario who zeroes in on Fanning’s model to be his muse. The actor’s involvement will double as a family reunion of sorts, as Nivola co-starred alongside Hendricks and Fanning in Ginger & Rosa. The former played his wife and the latter his daughter.
Production on The Neon Demon began in late March and is expected to wrap sometime in May. While there’s no official release date for the movie as yet, it will most likely debut in 2016.