Amazon Studios has picked up its most significant title since it acquired Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq earlier this year. The Neon Demon, which Amazon bought at the American Film Institute festival in Los Angeles, is the new film from director Nicolas Winding Refn. It is a starry horror about an aspiring model who moves to LA and becomes the envy of a group of beauty-obsessed women.
“One morning I woke and realised I was both surrounded and dominated by women,” Refn said. “Strangely, a sudden urge was planted in me to make a horror film about vicious beauty.”
Amazon will release the film in cinemas next summer, alongside early-window streaming on Amazon Prime Instant Video. This schedule suggests the film may follow Refn’s previous two movies, 2011’s Drive and 2013’s Only God Forgives, in premiering at Cannes in May.
Elle Fanning, Keanu Reeves, Christina Hendricks and Jena Malone star in The Neon Demon, which will see Refn working again with composer Cliff Martinez and editor Matthew Newman. Refn has co-scripted the film with Mary Laws and Steven Canfield Crowley.
Key properties recently acquired by Amazon Studios include Lee’s Chi-Raq, the Kristen Wiig comedy Desired Moments, a new TV show from Woody Allen – and the former Variety chief critic Scott Foundas, who announced that he would be leaving the magazine to take up a role at the studios earlier this year.
