‘Sacrifice’ by Romain Gavras.
Music video director turned filmmaker Romain Gavras has set his first English-language film titled “Sacrifice”. a satire starring Chris Evans (Captain America) and Anya Taylor-Joy (Furiosa). It was co-written by Garvas and Will Arbery (Succession). CAA Media Finance and Rocket Science brought the star studded package to this year’s Cannes market. Iconoclast will produce alongside Evans and Taylor-Joy.
Joining Chris Evans and Anya Taylor-Joy, is Salma Hayek (Eternals) and Oscar winner Brendan Fraser (The Whale). In September, Sam Richardson (The Afterparty) was added to the cast. regarding the cast, Deadline stated “Like his last film “Athena” that premiered at Venice, “Sacrifice” has a similar combustible and propulsive anarchy coursing through the film”.
Synopsis: After a very public breakdown, film star Mike Tyler needs to get back in the spotlight. Tonight is his comeback at a celebrity charity gala on a volcanic island, but he is upstaged when the event is raided by a radical group of warriors led by the zealous Joan. She kidnaps Mike along with the world’s richest man and another person, dragging them across an unforgiving landscape for the sake of a prophecy with apocalyptic stakes: to save humanity by sacrificing three lives. Mike sees a chance at redemption by surviving this role of a lifetime, but Joan will stop at nothing to fulfill her mission.
Taylor-Joy will play the passionate antagonist — and Evans will play the movie star she has tapped to die, along with the two others.
The film is different from his last film, the action-thriller “Athena” which was released on Netflix. This is closer to satire, but the script by Garvas and Will Arbery was strong enough to compel the leads to commit over the span of four days since the script was sent to the actors. More actors will be announced in the coming days. All the elements are there to launch Garvas as a major writer-director, here making his first English-language film.
Anya Taylor-Joy is coming off “Furiosa”, one of the best action films released this year, with some of the best acting of her career. She will be seen next in Scott Derrickson’s “The Gorge” alongside Miles Teller, the film is in production right now. Chris Evans is coming off of “Knives Out” and the action film “The Gray Man”. He will be seen next in Celine Song’s “Materialists” alongside Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal.
After winning the Best Actor Oscar for “The Whale”, Brendan Fraser was also recently seen in “Killers of the Flower Moon”. He has Max Barbakow’s “Brothers” coming next, alongside Peter Dinklage and Josh Brolin which will be released on Amazon Prime.
Speaking to Deadline about the film, the French filmmaker said; “It came from a very simple idea, which is every time you go to those events, whether it’s in Cannes, whether it’s a charity event and where you have all those people, the mischievous side of me, and I think the audience as well when they’re watching those events, they kind of want something to go really horribly wrong, When you see glitzy people and all the shininess and all that stuff, you want that moment to be twisted right?”
Romain Garvas is known for directing Jamie xx’s video “Gosh”, Kanye West’s video “No Church in the Wild” and M.I.A.’s “Born Free”, both controversial for their depiction of graphic violence. Gavras’s film and music videos often portray a gritty setting juxtaposed with high energy content.
The son of the great filmmaker Costa Gavras (Z, Missing, The Ax). Romain has woven into the plot the Greek mythology tales he grew up exposed to by his dad and mom. Having grown up with a glimpse of fame, he came up with the plot, whose jumping off point was the desire to see that balloon of fame punctured.
co-writer Arbery is a playwright and screenwriter who won the WGA Award for “Succession” and whose play, “Hero’s of the Fourth Turning” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Obie and Whiting Award winner.
The plan is to shoot the film in September.
