EXCLUSIVE: The 80s-set vampire thriller Flesh Of The Gods, starring Kristen Stewart and Wagner Moura, has started production in the Canary Islands, Spain, with the second half of the shoot scheduled for Cologne, Germany. 

Esmé Creed-Miles (A Head Full of Ghosts), Roland Møller (Citadel) and Alba Baptista (Voltron) have newly joined the cast of Panos Cosmatos’ (Mandy) buzzy genre pic, which was previously pre-bought by A24 for domestic.

Stewart and Moura will portray Raoul and Alex, “a married couple in glittering ’80s L.A. who descend each evening from their luxury skyscraper condo and head into an electric nighttime realm. When they cross paths with the mysterious and enigmatic Nameless and her hard-partying cabal, Raoul and Alex are seduced into a glamorous, surrealistic world of hedonism, thrills and violence.”

The film is written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Se7en) based on a story by Cosmatos and Walker and has some new production partners. Pic is being produced by Hyperobject Industries, Augenschein Filmproduktion, Nevermind Pictures and XYZ Films. XYZ Films and YouRoc are financing, in association with IPR.VC and Vixens. XYZ will continue dealmaking at the Cannes market. Domestic rights are handled by CAA Media Finance and WME Independent, with XYZ Films handling international sales.

Flesh of the Gods marks the fourth collaboration between Cosmatos and XYZ, as they produced the recent Miley Cyrus film Something Beautiful, which will debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival last year. They also have Nekrokosm in development with A24. 

Creed-Miles will next star opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones in Georgia Oakley’s Sense and Sensibility for Focus Features and Working Title. She recently wrapped production as the lead of Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s A Head Full of Ghosts opposite Rebecca Hall for Lionsgate. Last year she co-starred in Kristen Stewart’s directorial debut, The Chronology of Water.

Danish actor Møller’s breakout performance was in the Oscar-nominated war drama Land of Mine. He’s also known for  Atomic Blonde, Papillon, Skyscraper, The Commuter, Riders of Justice and the Amazon spy series Citadel.

Baptista will next be seen in the Amazon feature, Voltron, starring opposite Henry Cavill, Sterling K. Brown for director Rawson Thurber. She is best known for Netflix series Warrior Nun.

Esme Creed-Miles is repped by WME, Independent Talent Group and Omni Artists. Roland Møller is repped by CAA. Alba Baptista is repped by UTA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. 

On the eve of the Cannes Film Festival, some 600 French film professionals, including acclaimed actors Juliette Binoche, Adèle Haenel, Swann Arlaud and Damien Bonnard, have signed an open letter opposing plans by right-wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré to take full control of UGC, France’s third-largest cinema chain.

The letter, published in left-leaning French newspaper Libération, warned that the takeover deal by Bolloré, whose media empire has been accused of promoting reactionary and far-right ideas, would amount to a “fascist takeover of the collective imagination.”

Through his media company Vivendi, Bolloré already owns Canal+, France’s largest pay-TV company, and its subsidiary Studiocanal, Europe’s leading film production company. Through Canal+, Bolloré holds a 34 percent stake in the UGC cinema chain, but he has announced plans to take full control of UGC by 2028. Bolloré’s media empire includes CNews, a popular French news channel that figures on the left have attacked for allegedly giving a platform to far-right voices.

The film industry backlash against Bolloré follows a protest by more than 100 writers, who last month quit the historic French publishing house Grasset, another Bolloré asset, accusing him of promoting reactionary and far-right ideas. In a French senate hearing in 2022, Bolloré denied any political or ideological motive in his media acquisitions, saying his interest in the film and TV business was purely financial and about expanding French cultural soft power.

In the letter, the French film professionals, which include producers, distributors, exhibitors, filmmakers, technicians, and crew, said they all, to varying degrees now depend on Vincent Bolloré’s money for our projects as well as our salaries,” but that they felt compelled to “break the silence insidiously imposed on our industry. They accuse Bolloré of leading “a reactionary, far-right “civilizational project” through his television channels like CNews and his publishing houses. While the influence of this ideological offensive on film content has been discreet so far, we are under no illusions: it won’t last.”

The group warns that the UGC deal will give Bolloré an “unprecedented concentration” of financial power within the French film industry, giving him “complete freedom to act when the time comes. We won’t be able to say we didn’t know.”

Noting that France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party has called for the dismantling of key institutes in the French film industry, including the national film board CNC, and the French public broadcasting system, the letter asks: “Do we want to risk a future where only propaganda films serving an ideology are funded?”

EXCLUSIVE: WTFilms has unveiled first sales and a first clip for French director Marion Le Corroller’s body horror thriller Species ahead of its premiere in Cannes Midnight Screenings this week.

In Europe, the film has sold to Spain to Barcelona-based indie distributors ADSO and Twelve Oaks Pictures, the latter of which recently also acquired Virginia Woolf’s Night & Day, as well as Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Scandinavia (Njuta Fillms), German-speaking Europe (Lighthouse) and CIS (Magic). ARP Selection pre-bought the film for France.

In the rest of the world, it has been acquired for Latin America (Cine Video Y TV), Thailand (Movie Copyright), Turkey (Mars), Vietnam and Cambodia (Mockingbird), India (Impact) and the Philippines (888).

Mara Taquin stars as aspiring doctor Margot, who is interning at the most competitive ER in the country, where she struggles to keep up with the high-pressure environment.  Suddenly young multiple patients of her age start to arrive with strange symptoms, just as she starts developing a strange metamorphosis herself. Karin Viard, Kim Higelin and Sami Outalbali also feature in the cast.

Speaking to Deadline ahead of the premiere, Le Corroller explains inspiration for the film came not from any experience of working in a hospital, but rather in the world of finance.

“It was far worse. I never managed to adapt myself to this work environment and that was my main inspiration for the film,” she says. “I wanted to tell a story about bodies forced to change, to evolve and adapt to a very toxic and demanding workplace.”

Le Corroller follows in the footsteps of female French body horror genre directors Coralie Fargeat (The Substance) and Julie Ducournau (Raw, Titane).

“They are both very inspiring women. I think French female directors are very politically engaged. Talking about bodies and offering a new way to look at them is a game changer. It’s very important, that us, women, take this responsibility,” she says.

“Aside from Julia and Coralie, my master in cinema is Ari Aster. To me he is the new king of horror of this century. Beau is Afraid is a masterpiece and inspires me every day.”

The film is produced by Windy Production and Trésor Films. WTFilms is continuing to consolidate sales in Cannes.