Actress/writer/stand-up comedian Jenny Slate, whose credits include Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Marvel Comics adaptation Venom, and Saturday Night Live, has signed on to star in the horror film Mindful, which Deadline describes as being about “a possessed meditation app that begins to kill its followers.”
Perry Blackshear (They Look Like People) will be directing the film from a screenplay by Leslie Bohem, who got his start writing House III: The Horror Show and A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child. In the decades since, Bohem has worked on the likes of Nowhere to Run, Daylight, Dante’s Peak, The Darkest Hour, The Alamo, and the mini-series Taken. The story he has crafted for Mindful has the following synopsis: When her husband shockingly dies while meditating on the Mindful app, Angela (Slate), deeply suspicious of the new wellness craze, uncovers supernatural forces that have fused with the technology. As the app’s popularity spreads like wildfire, she is forced to confront her own demons and dive into a terrifying ‘out of body’ experience in order to save the ones she loves.
Tracey Nyberg is producing the film, with Aggregate Films executive producing. The plan is for production to begin in the third quarter of the year. Architect is handling international sales and CAA Media Finance represents the North American distribution rights.
Blackshear had this to say about Mindful: “I am delighted to be working with such a high caliber actress as Jenny, whose natural empathy will draw our audience inextricably into this terrifying tale, but also skewer with a straight face our collective obsession with technology and self-help culture.“
Architect’s Calum Gray added: “Mindful is a perfect horror movie; thrilling, haunting and a nerve-shredding rollercoaster experience but also with something very distinctive to say about the culture we live in. It will hook audiences and create real online heat as it builds a visionary, terrifying world with a unique antagonist and mythology. It’s exactly the kind of differentiated, high concept, commercial movie Architect are determined to bring to buyers.“
Jenny Slate starring in a horror movie from the writer of A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child? I can’t miss that. Are you interested in Mindful? Let us know by leaving a comment below.