Richard Kelly has made a name for himself as a director who makes metaphysical, ‘weird’ cult films — a reputation he kick-started with his phenomenal first feature, Donnie Darko (2001), and solidified with his thoroughly strange Southland Tales in 2006. However, for his next picture Kelly is heading in a decisively more mainstream direction, with plans to write and direct the contemporary thriller Corpus Christi.
The Texas-set film, which Kelly will produce under his Darko Entertainment banner with horror impresario Eli Roth, centers on “a mentally unstable Iraq war veteran, who forges a strange friendship with his boss, a wealthy and politically ambitious owner of a supermarket chain.”
Although the plot details are vague, Variety claims this will be Kelly’s first film “without heavy sci-fi or metaphysical elements,” for better or for worse.
Principal photography is set to begin on location this July, with casting currently underway. Despite his reputation as something of an ‘indie’ director, Kelly has worked with A-List talent in the past, like Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in Southland Tales, so several big-name actors could be expected to sign on. We should hear about the final casting when an announcement is made later next month.
Source: Variety
