Great news, Baby Annette fans: Sparks is doing another movie
X-Crucior will be written and produced by Ron and Russell Mael, the Sparks brothers
The Sparks brothers are, once again, pulling rabbits out of a hat and making another movie. Following up on the 2021 release of Edgar Wright’s The Sparks Brothers documentary and Leo Carax’s Annette, the brothers Mael, Ron and Russell, are bringing a new vision to the silver screen: X-Crucior.
While the new project’s plot is under wraps, the brothers did lock down a distributor, Focus Features, which also released Wright’s documentary. For their part, the Maels will write and executive produce the project. However, there’s still no word as to whether or not Baby Annette will appear.
Last year’s marriage between Sparks and cinema must’ve given them the movie bug. Aside from acting as the subject for Edgar Wright’s retrospective, the brothers also wrote the script and soundtrack for the musical Annette. The film is pure Sparks, a hyper-stylized, kinetic, and satirical look at the music industry, masculinity, and what it’s like to have a wooden doll for a baby. It’s a Pinnochio tale unlike any other, and it beat the others to the punch by coming out a year earlier.
Like Annette, X-Crucior is an “epic” musical. However, it’s unclear what genre the brothers are working in. Not that we should bother predicting what Sparks will do next. That would be a fool’s errand. Sparks is releasing its 27th studio album in 2023, so we imagine that will offer no hint at what this movie will sound like. It’s not like their 2020 album A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip resembled the music of Annette, which is in a far more operatic mode (and also features Adam Driver and Marion Cottilard). At the end of the day, it all just sounds like Sparks.
[via Deadline]