Audiences weren’t especially receptive to The Lonely Island’s Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, but perhaps the issue wasn’t that people inexplicably refuse to see movies with Andy Samberg, but that people just don’t like comedies about pop stars. If that’s the case, perhaps a serious drama about a pop star will receive a warmer welcome—after all, everybody seems to like The Bodyguard, and that was sort of a serious drama about a pop star. Anyway, director Brady Corbet is going to put this theory to the test with Vox Lux, a new film starring Rooney Mara as a singer who “rises…from the ashes of a major national tragedy to pop superstardom.” This comes from Variety, which says the film will be a “15-year odyssey” that charts the “important cultural evolutions” from 1999 to today through the point-of-view of Mara’s pop star.
That sounds a little strange—and may be making a not-so-subtle reference to 9/11—but perhaps the most exciting part of this news is that real-life superstar Sia will be composing all-new music for the soundtrack. The film is also being shot on fancier 65mm large format film, so it sounds like Corbet is getting ready to make a big deal out of Vox Lux.