Thomasin McKenzie of Last Night in Soho and Old and Zoë Kravitz of The Batman and Mad Max: Fury Road have signed on to star in the psychological horror movie Self-Portrait, Deadline reports. Based on the Rachel Lyon novel Self-Portrait With Boy, Self-Portrait is set to be directed by Mona Fastvold (The World to Come), who has also written the screenplay with Brady Corbet (Vox Lux).
McKenzie will be taking on the role of grieving photographer Lu Rile (McKenzie), who moves to a run-down artists’ warehouse in 1990s Brooklyn where she befriends Katherine (Kravitz), an accomplished painter who lives downstairs. When Katherine suffers her own tragic loss, Lu unknowingly captures the incident in one of her self-portraits, generating a sublime but horrifying image. Consumed with by mutual grief and an intensifying relationship, the women find themselves haunted by a demonic force hellbent on shaking their realities.
Self-Portrait is expected to begin filming later this year. John Lyons is producing the film with Margot Hand of Picture Films. Corbet and Fastvold serve as executive producers alongside Brian Young and Topic Studios’ Ryan Heller, Jennifer Westin, and Michael Bloom. Hayley Theisen is the co-producer.
The official description of Lyon’s novel Self-Portrait With Boy (pick up a copy HERE) gives a bit more information, and reveals a change that was made to the story for the adaptation: Lu Rile is a relentlessly focused young photographer struggling to make ends meet. Working three jobs, responsible for her aging father, and worrying that the crumbling warehouse she lives in is being sold to developers, she is at a point of desperation. One day, in the background of a self-portrait, Lu accidentally captures on film a boy falling past her window to his death. The photograph turns out to be startlingly gorgeous, the best work of art she’s ever made. It’s an image that could change her life…if she lets it. But the decision to show the photograph is not easy. The boy is her neighbors’ son, and the tragedy brings all the building’s residents together. It especially unites Lu with his beautiful grieving mother, Kate. As the two forge an intense bond based on sympathy, loneliness, and budding attraction, Lu feels increasingly unsettled and guilty, torn between equally fierce desires: to use the photograph to advance her career, and to protect a woman she has come to love.
How does Self-Portrait sound to you? Are you interested in watching a psychological horror movie that stars Thomasin McKenzie and Zoë Kravitz? Let us know by leaving a comment below. And if you’ve read the Rachel Lyon novel, definitely let us know what you thought of it.