Dark City Filmmaker Alex Proyas Is 'Returning To His Roots' With Sister Darkness
Alex Proyas has been MIA from the feature film scene since 2016's "Gods of Egypt," which fizzled at the box office despite its large scale and impressive cast, and that's not great. Proyas has turned in masterpieces and head-scratchers over the last 30 years, but one thing is always consistent with his work: he swings for the fences. That guy is not afraid to go big, go weird, and hope that the audience follows along.
All you have to do is look at his filmography and you'll see that thread time and again. Starting with "The Crow," his fantastic follow-up "Dark City," "I, Robot," and the absolutely bonkers Nicolas Cage film "Knowing," Proyas has always prioritized the odd and unusual in his movies. And that's not even counting his short films!
Well, now he's back at it with a new horror movie in the works called "Sister Darkness" which will be a 35 million dollar independent film made with Proyas' companies The Heretic Foundation and Mystery Clock Cinema, along with the production outfit 108 Media based out of the U.K.
The film is expected to be shot at Proyas's home base in Australia later this year and into early 2023, which would likely have it ready for screens by the end of 2023.
The movie sounds just as bizarre as you'd hope from a filmmaker like Proyas.
Described as a "female fever dream of revenge and gothic horror," the synopsis of "Sister Darkness" sounds as gonzo as the best of Proyas' output. Set in the 1930s U.K., the film follows a newly married woman named Alice who is not at all happy. She encounters her doppelganger, Isla, who happens to be on a mission of bloody revenge. The term "supernatural hellscape" was included in the description of the doppelganger's origins as well as the promise of an uprising against the aristocracy.
The official statement from 108 Media says that "Sister Darkness" will be made in the same vein as "The Crow" and promises to return the writer/director to his filmmaking roots. Proyas's inspiration is said to come from U.K. horror of the '60s and '70s, films like "The Innocents" and "The Legend of Hell House."
Side note: this era of U.K. horror was also a heavy inspiration for Edgar Wright's recent "Last Night in Soho," and "Hell House" was a key reference in his "Grindhouse" trailer, the immortal "Don't."
The release also adds that Proyas will be shooting this film using a fully virtual production process, which sounds to me like he built his own version of The Volume, which are the LED-screen sets that "The Mandalorian" and all the other "Star Wars" shows have been using. That should allow the filmmaker a great deal of freedom to explore all sorts of landscapes without leaving the studio, a natural evolution of the green screen that looks 100 times better.
That should mean that the $35 million spent on this movie could look double or triple that on-screen. With Proyas' insane eye behind the lens and his madman energy on the page, that could equal a welcome bit of auteur insanity when all is said and done.