Kristen Stewart's About To Star In A Different Kind Of Vampire Movie

Although his influences are on full display throughout, Panos Cosmatos’ films are still singular works of art, which may be why he has a hard time getting them financed in today’s algorithm-driven industry. The Mandy director’s films tend to sit for a while and then come together quickly, and that certainly seems to be the case with his latest project, a vampire movie called Flesh of the Gods.

Deadline reported early this morning that, two long years after it was first announced, Flesh of the Gods is finally moving forward. The movie has already started filming on the sun-drenched Canary Islands, and will move to Cologne, Germany in a few weeks for the second half of the shoot. Although it’s being shot in Europe, the film takes place in 1980s L.A., which will almost certainly be transformed into a dizzying swirl of neon and mirrors under Cosmatos’ psychedelic lens.

The premise contains shades of 1983’s The Hunger (starring David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve as a sexy vampire couple) and 2013’s Only Lovers Left Alive (starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as a depressed, but still sexy vampire couple), with a splash of Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool. Here, we’ve got Wagner Moura and Kristen Stewart as Raoul and Alex, a sexy, thrill-seeking couple who may or may not be vampires.

That part’s not clear yet, although Deadline’s description of the film does imply they’re nocturnal: “Raoul and Alex are a married couple in glittering ’80s L.A. who descend each evening from their luxury skyscraper condo and head into an electric nighttime realm,” the publication writes. “When they cross paths with the mysterious and enigmatic Nameless and her hard-partying crew, Raoul and Alex are seduced into a glamorous, surrealistic world of hedonism, thrills and violence.”

This will be Stewart’s big return to the genre, as she hasn’t appeared in a vampire movie since The Twilight Saga wrapped up back in 2012. That said, this is a very different type of vampire movie, way more in line with Stewart’s recent work in wonderfully bizarre movies like Love Lies Bleeding and Crimes of the Future (she also recently made her directorial debut with The Chronology of Water, which premiered at last year’s Cannes).

The rest of the cast is exciting as well. Wagner was recently nominated for an Oscar for his work in the Brazilian arthouse hit The Secret Agent, and made a splash with American audiences on last year’s awards circuit. Esmé Creed-Miles, who co-starred in The Chronology of Water, will also appear, as will Norwegian actor Roland Møller (Citadel) and Portuguese actress Alba Baptista, who’s probably best known abroad as the star of Netflix’s Warrior Nun.

In an intriguing twist, the script for Flesh of the Gods is being written by Andrew Kevin Walker, the screenwriter of S7ven, from a story by Cosmatos (Walker also recently wrote Fincher’s Netflix assassin movie The Killer, starring Michael Fassbender). A24 has already committed to distributing the film in the United States, so now that the project is in motion, the odds that you’ll actually be able to see it sometime next year are very good.