From an undisclosed location, deep within Lars von Trier-occupied Denmark, comes word that the festival circuit’s most lovable rascal has set his sights on Detroit as the setting for his next project. Though, not really, because von Trier is unable to travel to the United States, due to a crippling fear of flying and/or being proven wrong. But according to Indiewire—whose word we have to takem because we don’t read Danish—director Kristian Levring has told the music magazine Soundvenue that von Trier is writing a horror film “about a man fighting his inner demons,” and that “there is the wordplay between Detroit and ‘destroyed.’” (Which is possibly a hint that the movie will be called Destroit, Destroyt, or possibly even Detroid.)
Levring is set to the direct the film, which will be produced by von Trier’s Zentropa studio. It will presumably feature characters wandering through a landscape that looks more or less like Denmark, but with some CGI industrial ruins added in. This will mark the first time von Trier has penned a script for someone else since Thomas Vinterberg’s Dear Wendy (2004), which took place in a suspiciously Danish-looking part of West Virginia.