David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen reuniting again for sci-fi surgery movie
As reported by Deadline, director David Cronenberg and longtime collaborator Viggo Mortensen are teaming up again for Crimes Of The Future, a sci-fi movie written by Cronenberg and starring Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart, and Scott Speedman alongside Mortensen. This will be Cronenberg and Mortensen’s fourth film together, the other three being A History Of Violence, Eastern Promises, and A Dangerous Method, and Deadline also notes that this will be Cronenberg’s first sci-fi script since eXistenZ in 1999.
Now, before we say what Crimes Of The Future is about, we have an interesting situation: What follows here is either going to be very cool and exciting or very gross and weird, but we should point out that—despite the title—it’s not some kind of RoboCop thing about solving crimes in the future. It’s actually a glimpse into a near-future “where humankind is learning to adapt to its synthetic surroundings,” meaning people are embracing trans-humanism and exploring new ways of “altering their biological makeup.” This has led to a condition called “Accelerated Evolution Syndrome,” which a man named Saul Tenser (Mortensen, presumably) has adapted into a bizarre kind of performance art where he grows “new and unexpected organs” and then lets people watch as he has them removed. It sounds like it will escalate from there, with “both the government and a strange subculture taking note” and Tenser contemplating “his most shocking performance of all.”
Cronenberg himself is no help here, simply saying, “I have unfinished business with the future.” (That business, specifically, is growing weird, new organs and then letting people watch as you cut them out.) Production is set to start in Greece this summer.