After an eight-year hiatus from the screen, NEON (“Parasite“) is releasing David Cronenberg‘s latest body horror film, “Crimes of The Future” next month. Cronenberg has revealed in a new interview with Variety that the movie, starring Viggo Mortensen, Lea Seydoux, and Kristen Stewart, was originally offered to streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon but they didn’t bite.
That wasn’t the only project of Cronenberg’s rejected by Netflix—his series adaptation of his novel “Consumed” was turned away too. The filmmaker revealed he’s about to start writing a feature version of “Consumed,” but his supernatural film “The Shrouds,” starring French actor Vincent Cassel (“Eastern Promises“), comes next and was announced for the Cannes Market last week.
READ MORE: Vincent Cassel & David Cronenberg Reunite For Supernatural Film ‘The Shrouds’
“That’s correct. I don’t have a screenplay yet for that but I will be writing that.” Cronenberg told Variety about the status of the “Consumed” film incarnation. “But at the moment, the other project, which is called ‘The Shrouds,’ would come first. And so, yeah, we’ll have an interesting announcement to make about it.”
The official synopsis of the “Consumed” novel via Penguin Random House reads as follows:
In the book-filled, artfully messy Paris apartment of the famous French intellectuals Célestine and Aristide Arosteguy, an astonishing discovery is made. The grisly, butchered remains of Célestine are found–partially eaten–and her husband, sought by the police for questioning, has disappeared. Naomi Seberg, a young journalist, embarks upon a quest to uncover the truth of Célestine’s death and Aristide’s role in it, traveling to Tokyo to interview the suspected cannibal, while her boyfriend, Nathan Math, a medical journalist, seduces the cancer patient of a controversial Hungarian doctor, contracts a sexually transmitted disease, and traces the disease’s famous discoverer to Forest Hill Village in Toronto, where he encounters the most interesting journalistic subject of all.
While Cronenberg is keen on the idea of streaming, he attributes Netflix’s rejection of both “Consumed” and “Crimes of The Future” to the entertainment company being “conservative.”
“It turns out that it’s not so easy to get a series with Netflix. In fact, it seems that it might be easier to get an independent film made if it’s of a certain type. I’d say maybe a film that isn’t the conservative kind of movie as Netflix would like.”
Cronenberg continued to speak on the health of the film industry and Netflix’s role, saying, “Netflix has certainly affected the movie industry and the exhibition industry with cinemas. I think cinemas are dying, frankly. I think there will be cinemas, but there won’t be so many of them, and they will be showing niche films because otherwise, they’ll just be showing Marvel superhero movies.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Cronenberg makes a big comeback after the reaction to ‘Crimes’ at Cannes. The theatrical release on June 8 should be an indication of what extremes modern audiences can handle from the filmmaker, known for pushing buttons. At the very least, it sounds like he has his next two movies lined up.