Andrea Riseborough Will Jump Into Chris Abbott’s Brain For POSSESSOR
It seems like forever since we've heard from Brandon Cronenberg, whose Antiviral I remember seeing on opening night at Fantastic Fest some six years ago. That movie had a nightmarishly sterile quality about its body horror dystopia - where folks are obsessed with sharing celebrities' diseases - that had clearly seeped into the filmmaker's DNA from his father, David. It was a solid little debut that hinted at a new, sinister voice in genre cinema.
Now, Brandon Cronenberg is finally getting to make a sophomore feature: the rather ominously titled Possessor. Taking the body-exploring sci-fi a step futher, Cronenberg's next (which he'll be writing and directing) is centered around:
"An agent for a secretive organization who uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies, driving them to commit assassinations for the benefit of high-paying clients. But something goes wrong on a routine job, and she soon finds herself trapped in the mind of an unwitting suspect whose appetite for violence turns out to rival her own."
Out of Cannes, more word is coming regarding this project, as it has cast Andrea Risborough - who's about to melt your faces off in Mandy later this summer - as the brain-hopping assassin, and Christopher Abbott as her latest, overly aggressive target. The movie will be funded and filmed in Canada (duh), with the participation of Telefilm Canada and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
It'll be neat to see what Brandon Cronenberg's cooked up with Possessor, as it sounds very much in line with his initial picture. Here's hoping this one makes another appearance at Fantastic Fest, as that crowd gobbled up Antiviral and all of its bizarre, unsettling imagery.
