Yahoo News Jenny Slate To Star In App Horror ‘Mindful’; Architect & CAA Launch Sales Ahead Of Cannes Market
EXCLUSIVE: Everything Everywhere All At Once and Venom star Jenny Slate will lead cast in and executive-produce horror movie Mindful, about a possessed meditation app that begins to kill its followers.
Actress, author and stand-up Slate is in the limelight having recently co-created, co-written, co-produced and voiced the titular character of Marcel in A24’s Oscar-nominated film Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, and for having co-starred in Oscar and box office breakout Everything Everywhere All At Once. The SNL alum is also well known for voicing animated series such as Big Mouth and Bob’s Burgers.
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In Mindful, when her husband shockingly dies while meditating on the Mindful app, Angela (Slate), deeply suspicious of the new wellness craze, uncovers supernatural forces that have fused with the technology. As the app’s popularity spreads like wildfire, she is forced to confront her own demons and dive into a terrifying ‘out of body’ experience in order to save the ones she loves.
Perry Blackshear (They Look Like People) will direct from a script by Emmy, Golden Globe and Writers Guild award winner Les Bohem, who wrote — and exec-produced with Steven Spielberg — SyFi Channel miniseries Taken. Tracey Nyberg (You’re Place Or Mine) will produce, with Aggregate Films executive-producing.
Fledgling UK sales outfit Architect have launched international sales and CAA Media Finance will represent North American rights. The plan is to shoot in Q3, 2023, in North America. Additional casting is underway.
Blackshear’s feature debut They Look Like People won the Special Jury Award at Slamdance, and was acquired by Netflix in the U.S. His original series Possession, with executive producer Mike Flanagan, also recently sold to Netflix.
He said: “I am delighted to be working with such a high caliber actress as Jenny, whose natural empathy will draw our audience inextricably into this terrifying tale, but also skewer with a straight face our collective obsession with technology and self-help culture.”
Calum Gray of Architect added: “Mindful is a perfect horror movie; thrilling, haunting and a nerve-shredding rollercoaster experience but also with something very distinctive to say about the culture we live in. It will hook audiences and create real online heat as it builds a visionary, terrifying world with a unique antagonist and mythology. It’s exactly the kind of differentiated, high concept, commercial movie Architect are determined to bring to buyers.”
Producer Nyberg was previously at Mythology Entertainment, where she worked on Michael Bay’s Ambulance, Eli Roth’s The House with a Clock in Its Walls and Searchlight’s breakout horror Ready or Not; at Temple Hill she executive-produced Lasse Hallstrom’s box office hit Safe Haven; and at Overbrook she worked on Hancock and Seven Pounds.
Architect launched at EFM 2023 and was founded by former Embankment execs Calum Gray and Max Pirkis, together with Patrick Fischer and Richard Kondal of Creativity Capital. The company’s debut slate includes the BFI and BBC Film-financed Lollipop, and Sundance world premiere The Starling Girl, from writer-director Laurel Parmet.
Slate is represented by CAA, Linden Entertainment, and Yorn, Levine, Barnes, Krintzman, Rubenstein, Kohner, Endlich, & Gellman; Bohem is represented by is repped by UTA, Marathon and Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Adler, Feldman & Clark; Blackshear is represented by CAA, Lit Entertainment Group, and Marios Rush Legal Group, LLC; and Aggregate is represented by CAA, Lighthouse Management, and attorney Tom Hoberman.
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