A Weinstein- inspired horror movie? TIFF is willing to talk about it
Toronto International Film Fesitval may be backdrop for Predator
Is Brian De Palma really going to make a Harvey Weinstein-inspired horror movie and set it at the Toronto International Film Festival? If so, it could help serve as a reminder of the need to fight sexual harassment and to empower women, says TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey.
“It reminds us of just the real importance and the urgency of making a change in the film industry when it comes to gender parity,” Bailey told the Star.
Online reports this week, drawing from interviews De Palma is doing while on a European book tour, say the writer/ director plans to make a horror film called Predator in Toronto based on the alleged sex crimes of disgraced producer Weinstein.
The film, to be produced by the same people who made Paul Verhoeven’s controversial rape- reckoning film Elle, would potentially use TIFF as a backdrop for the title predator’s crimes. Weinstein, who this week pleaded not guilty to multiple rape and criminal sex act charges in New York, is alleged to have used film festivals — including TIFF, Cannes and Sundance — as his hunting grounds to abuse women. Bailey, who will become TIFF’s co- headon Oct. 1, said he hasn’t yet been approached about the film by Hollywood veteran De Palma, whose previous movies include Carrie, Dressed to Kill and Mission: Impossible.
He said TIFF is “following it as we read Twitter” and it’s too soon to say whether the festival would allow De Palma, 77, to use its TIFF Bell Lightbox headquarters and other facilities for a movie shoot, the way Cannes did when the American filmmaker used the French festival for multiple scenes in his 2002 thriller Femme Fatale.
Added Bailey: “I think we’d probably wait to see where this project goes and what it asks of us, but for us, really, what it raises is just the kind of harassment that had been happening throughout the industry, including at film festivals over the years, and how important it is to get women into more positions of power in the industry, telling their own stories. We’ve been doing a lot of that here, by Share Her Journey and other things.”
De Palma has been a familiar face at TIFF for decades. He most recently visited the festival in 2016, where he served as one of the three jury members of the Platform program, a mini- competition within the festival to select the best of new and challenging world cinema.
“Brian’s been at the festival many times and we think he’s a great filmmaker,” Bailey said. “This project ( Predator) is something that I think we just need to see what happens with it.”
A ccording to Deadline, De Palma’s producer Saïd Ben Saïd says the project will happen in 2019, not this year, because the filmmaker is currently readying his next film, a crime thriller called Domino, for release this October — which means it could potentially premiere in September at TIFF 2018.