In the 15 plus years that filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell has been on the scene, he’s only made three feature-length films, but at least one of them, the queercore punk rock musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” has grown iconic enough to become a Broadway play (the movie started as an off-Broadway play 17 years ago). While 2010’s deeply underrated “Rabbit Hole” was underseen and underloved (though Nicole Kidman did earn an Oscar nomination for her performance), you can thank it for essentially launching Miles Tellers‘ career (he wouldn’t catch on for a few years, but casting directors took note).
Five years on, Cameron has another film finally in the works, a high concept sci-fi comedy called “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” a long developing adaptation of Neil Gaiman‘s short story which will star Elle Fanning. Mitchell has been delayed in working on the picture for a while — it has animation and will be quite involved — but now that his Hedwig run concludes at the end of April, he’ll return his attention to the project.
READ MORE: John Cameron Mitchell Talks Animated ‘The Ruined Cast’ & Upcoming Neil Gaiman Adaptation
In a recent EW interview, the filmmaker revealed he has a high profile musician in mind to score some of the movie’s music. “I’m sort of easing back into it. Working on some animation design. Some music. James Murphy is hopefully going to be working on it,” he said of the former LCD Soundsystem frontman and producer who’s been scoring Noah Baumbach films of late.
It sounds like they’ll be a variety of music in it and different kinds of sonic collaborators. “There are different kinds of music in it, punk and we created a new kind of extraterrestrial music, extraterrestrial dance music,” he said. “Also Nico Muhly [composer for “The Reader,” among others], who is a famous classical guy is going to be involved. It needs its own time. We are reaching out to a few actors now. Elle Fanning is already attached as the lead. Hopefully we’ll be shooting next fall in London. She’s the alien lead.”
While it is based on a Gaiman short story about an alien touring the galaxy who breaks away from her group and meets two young inhabitants a dangerous futuristic suburb of London, Mitchell also noted that he “expanded” the story beyond its mere 4,500 word count. “There’s a lot of original music,” he added. “There’s animation. It’s a period piece in 1977 London, the punk scene. But it’s a comedy on the surface, but quite touching as well. It’s almost a little bit like Romeo and Juliet, but it’s punks and aliens rather than Montagues and Capulets.” Super sold. This one can’t come soon enough, and we hope the Murphy and Muhly musical collaborations stick.