Title confusion! Nope, this isn't Steven Soderbergh's upcoming thriller, "Side Effects" (plural), but instead, it's the next effort from Ti West, "The Side Effect" (singular). Stay with us.
"The Innkeepers" director has been talking up his next movie since SXSW last spring, and it was earlier this week when he told us he was looking to get the sci-fi project off the ground next month. And it looks like it's happening. Deadline reports that Liv Tyler has landed the lead role in what sounds like a tremendously ambitious (and promising) thriller.
The story will center around Catherine Rigby (Tyler), who is working alone in space as an experimental subject for a pharmaceutical company when she suddenly and mysteriously becomes pregnant. As she tries to find out how this happened, paranoia sets in as she continues to float alone in space. Last March, West filled us in on the inspiration for the movie. "I had a very difficult run-in with an insurance company and that's what [begat the film]. It was me against a corporation and I just knew I couldn't win so I felt like I was going to make this as painful for them as possible because this is unfair. So I would just drag it out and [that element] — one person against a corporation — is what started the idea," he said about the movie that he described as "much more high-concept idea then my movies usually are."
The rights for the movie will be shopped at the upcoming European Film Market and we presume if sales are made, West can start in on pre-production, which he stressed to us he'll need the right amount of money for to do it right: "…it’s a science fiction movie, so we need to build spaceships, so it’s one of those things I can’t really rush into and I can’t do it for less than we need for it, because we have to build things. But I would hope that right after Sundance, that kicks into gear, and I would love to be prepping that in February,” he said adding, "…the smallest amount of money to do what I do is what I want. I don’t want a dime more, but I don’t want a dime less either. Like I don’t want to go, 'We’ve run out of money to put that extra thing on the spaceship,' but I don’t want to have money for no reason. So I think it’s going to happen – it’s a great producer, I think it’s a good script, it’s a great cast.”
We're always up for high-concept sci-fi and this sounds like a particularly good blend of genre elements on topical subject matter. Hopefully, there will be more to come very soon.