Ahead of the release of his new adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s “Rebecca” for Netflix later this month, filmmaker Ben Wheatley (“Free Fire,” “High Rise”) has revealed he has already shot another film since that movie was completed.
Wheatley is next set to helm the sequel to the recent “Tomb Raider” reboot with Alicia Vikander returning to reprise her role of Lara Croft. Ahead of that, he tells Little White Lies (via Indiewire) he shot a horror movie over fifteen days in August in the middle of his coronavirus lockdown as a palette cleanser “to keep [his] head together with lockdown happening”.’
The film is also a response to the ongoing crisis and says its in part the result of “a datedness that he perceived in the titles released to VOD that couldn’t take the new status quo into account.” The limitations aren’t a problem for him though: “I’ve said it a lot, but I think I’ve always seen it as there being genres of subject but also genres of budget, and those genres of budget are micro-budget, low-budget, mid-budget, and high-budget, which make for totally different filmmaking experiences.”
Wheatley isn’t ready to share any further details about the feature, but it would bring him back to his horror roots as he broke out with smaller budget dark tales like “Kill List” and “Sightseers”.