Canadian director Xavier Dolan has revealed that he is writing a period horror movie set in 1880s France, which he hopes to shoot in late 2025. If the project comes together, it will be Dolan’s first feature since Matthias & Maxime, which premiered in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2019.
“It’s something I wrote before the pandemic, and I’m looking at again… It’s a genre film, a horror film, set in 1880s in France,” Dolan told the Canadian cinema podcast Sans Filtre.
During the episode, Dolan talked at length about the personal impact of negative reviews for his sixth feature It’s Only the End of the World when it premiered in Competition in Cannes in 2016.
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Dolan hit back at the time, and the experience appears to continue to play into his work.
Talking about the new horror movie project, he said: “It feels removed from my life and what I know but on re-reading it, I understood that it is a film about the fear of failure, the fear of being rejected, of being misunderstood, the difficulty of creating.
“Unconsciously, I’ve returned to the same themes, in a period that I don’t know, but which appeals to me and in a style which appeals to me, but with a completely different proposition. I feel that I can surpass myself, learn and grow with themes that are dear to me but in the horror genre.”
Since Matthias & Maxime, Dolan has worked on the short film Happy Diamonds, music video Adele: Easy On Me, and the 2022 TV miniseries The Night Logan Woke Up which he also wrote during the pandemic.
More recently, Dolan returned to acting with roles in Xavier Giannoli’s Balzac adaptation Lost Illusions and Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, lending his voice to the artificial intelligence system.
Dolan said he was in the process of re-writing the screenplay for his new horror film.
“It’s going to cost a lot. You’ve got the costumes, the lighting,” he said of the production, which he plans to shoot on location in and around the Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy as well as in the studio.
In the meantime, Dolan is gearing for the publication of a book entitled A Friendship Through Film, celebrating the 10th anniversary of his film Mommy, in a joint project between his company Sons of Manual and French film company mk2.
The book will gather unseen images shot by photographer and longtime friend Shayne Laverdière, capturing the Mommy shoot as well as its triumphant launch at Cannes in 2014, where it won the Jury Prize.