Unbeknownst at the time to the horror aficionados who ranted and raved about it, Ti West’s slasher flick X, produced by scare-central distributor A24, filmed an at-the-time confidential project alongside the main feature. In the months since its critically acclaimed release, X has received its prequel title: Pearl. A24 and Ti West have been tight-lipped about the much-anticipated prequel for a long time, but the silence has finally been broken.
Another well-kept secret was that Mia Goth, who portrays Maxine Minx in Ti West’s innovative slasher, stars in a dual role as the film’s main antagonist, Pearl. Achieved solely with prosthetics and makeup, Goth was aged fifty years and given the chance to flex her acting muscles, proving her impressive range as an elderly woman suffering from heartache and psychosis in sharp contrast with a twenty-something porn star.
A24 have shared the official poster for Pearl, featuring Mia Goth as a younger version of the character in Victorian-esque clothing. Ti West directed the prequel and co-wrote its screenplay with Mia Goth, working closely with the lead actress to capture Pearl’s personality as a much younger — but just as homicidal — working-class woman. Check out the poster below, which is stylized with the familiar neon effect seen in West’s X poster.
Currently in post-production, A24 have also announced that an official trailer for Pearl will drop tomorrow. Mia Goth is joined by David Corenswet as Howard, and Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, and Emma Jenkins-Purro in undisclosed roles.
Courtesy of Bloody Disgusting, West vaguely described the project thusly:
“Part of the idea of this movie that’s cool to me is that there is a bigger thing to it all. What I can tell you about Pearl, because we’ve already made it and it’s done, is it is very much a story about Pearl. So you will learn more about her. It is stylistically very different from X. You do not need one without the other, but they enrich each other in a specific way. In the way that X is affected, let’s say by 1970s horror independent filmmaking and Americana cinema, Pearl is influenced by a very different era of filmmaking. If we do the third one, it will be affected by a different type of cinema.”
The official synopsis for Pearl has been revealed and reads as follows:
“Set during WWI in 1918 and explores the origins of Pearl, the villainous character from X. The events take place prior to the previous film, and explore how the cabin, where the ‘massacre of X’ takes place, was once used as a boarding house during the war.”
Hopefully, the trailer for Pearl will give us a concrete release date, but since the film is in post-production, it can be expected to release later this year.