Brady Corbet, director of the upcoming A24 filmThe Brutalist,is already looking ahead to his next project. FollowingThe Brutalist,centering around an architect (Adrien Brody) fleeing post-war Europe in 1947 and pursuing the American Dream, Corbet will do something completely different. He revealed in aNew Yorkerprofile that his next film,a horror-Westernalso centering around immigration, will “shake viewers.” According to The New Yorker:
The new project, which is set in the nineteen-seventies and early eighties, will also deal with immigration, this time of the Chinese to California. Its style will be looser; genre-wise, it will draw on horror and Westerns.
Apparently, the seed of the idea came to the director when he hosted a Halloween watch party forThe Texas Chainsaw Massacrewith his partner and collaborator, the filmmaker Mona Fastvold. Their 10-year-old daughter Ada and various friends were also in attendance.
The Brutalist Review: A Cinematic Masterpiece Easily Contends for the Year’s Best Film
A Jewish-Hungarian architect (Adrien Brody) arrives in 1947 Philadelphia and becomes beholden to a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce).
A fan of the 1974 slasher classic, Corbet is a cinephile with blinders on, and thus wasn’t thinking about how the cannibal horror film might affect his 10-year-old daughter. Fastvold had never seenThe Texas Chainsaw Massacreand was a little upset that Corbet thought the movie, about a deranged family of cannibals, was something a 10-year-old should see. “She was, like, ‘You’re insane that you thought that this was O.K.,’” Corbet told The New Yorker, which writes:
“[Corbet] had thought that Ada, having spent her life on movie sets, would be able to distinguish the fake from the real, but the level of craftsmanship was so excellent that it got to even the most jaded viewers among them.”
Their reaction sparked the idea for Corbet, who is in a particularly special position having made one of the most acclaimed films of the year withThe Brutalist(for which he’s expected to take home the Oscar for either Best Director, Best Picture, Best Screenplay, or any combination thereof).“I think that my immediate response to the reception of [The Brutalist] is, like, ‘Well, now you have an opportunity to make something that really pisses everyone off,'” he told The New Yorker. “It seems like a good time to really shake viewers. I think they can handle it.”
Watch Our Interview with Adrien Brody for ‘The Brutalist’
The Respect for Brady Corbet Is Overdue
Corbet’s horror-Western film in the works continues a long line of projects for the burgeoning auteur, who has been around Hollywood for most of his life. Corbet began his career as a child actor. He made his film debut in the 2003 movieThirteen. He went on to work with (and learn from) some of the best modern directors, starring in Gregg Araki’sMysterious Skin, Michael Haneke’sFunny Games, Lars von Trier’sMelancholia, Olivier Assayas’Clouds of Sils Maria, Ruben Östlund’sForce Majeure, and Noah Baumbach’sWhile We’re Young.
His directorial debut came in 2015 withThe Childhood of a Leader,which clocked him accolades such as the Luigi De Laurentiis Award for a Debut Film and the Orizzonti Award for Best Director at the Venice International Film Festival. He followed that with the experimentalVox Luz, starring Natalie Portman Jude Law. His latest film,The Brutalist, was recentlynominated for several Golden Globesincluding Best Motion Picture – Drama, while Corbet is nominated for Best Director and Corbet and Fastvold are up for Best Original Screenplay.The Brutalisthits theaters this Friday, December 20.
The Brutalist
Escaping post-war Europe, visionary architect László Toth arrives in America to rebuild his life, his work, and his marriage to his wife Erzsébet after being forced apart during wartime by shifting borders and regimes. On his own in a strange new country, László settles in Pennsylvania, where the wealthy and prominent industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren recognizes his talent for building. But power and legacy come at a heavy cost…
