Netflix executives have turned down David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds

David Cronenberg and Vincent Cassel at the Cannes Film Festival photo shoot for The Shrouds.

Courtesy of Getty Images

David Cronenberg has opened up about the release of his film Shrouds to Netflix directors as a TV series, who gave the green light to write the first episode before rejecting the director’s project.

The sci-fi drama, which aired at Cannes to three-and-a-half minutes of applause before Cronenberg spoke to the audience, follows Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a prominent businessman and inconsolable widower whose wife (Diane Kruger) invents a revolutionary and controversial technology. The living were able to observe the decomposition of their deceased loved ones in their graves.

Cronenberg spoke at the film’s press conference at Cannes on Tuesday, explaining how he envisioned the story working well as a series. He flew to Los Angeles to speak with two Netflix executives who funded the writing of the first episode — which they loved. But after the second, they didn’t want to go any further.

“They said — and this is a very Hollywood thing — this is not what we fell in love with in the room,” Cronenberg said. “Later on, I felt like what they fell in love with in the room was me, which was very interesting, but not the script. “I felt like I can’t let this die, let’s see if we can make it into a movie… Maybe “It has to be a series, but it doesn’t have to be.”

Cronenberg touched on how deeply his own life affected the story, having lost his beloved wife Caroline to cancer, just as Castle’s character does. Some of the harsher critics of his film described it as “ignorant” and “stupid” because they did not care much about the plot element. Shrouds. “If you are an atheist like me and do not believe in an afterlife, then someone’s death is meaningless,” he said. “It is very difficult for people to live without meaning.”

“One way you can create meaning when there isn’t any is to come up with a theory, or a conspiracy, that explains why someone died… Whatever the conspiracy is, it gives you a sense of knowing and a power that you know something that others don’t know. It empowers you Those stupid journalists who didn’t see this, there was a point to it and you might think it doesn’t work is one thing, but not noticing that is a problem for me as a director.

Cronenberg even talked about how the technology depicted in his film was written to be realistic in today’s world: “The technology is there now… It can be done, if anyone really wants to do it.”

Both Krueger and Cassell praised Cronenberg for his directorial style and spoke of how impressed they were by how emotionally close the film was. Shrouds It reflects Cronenberg’s struggle with the loss of his wife. In an interview with Hollywood ReporterThe German actress said that the film “made me think about my death.”

Guy Pearce, Sandrine Hoult, and Elizabeth Saunders star in supporting roles in the film.

This is Cronenberg’s seventh film in competition at Cannes, and his style of body horror casts a long shadow over the Croisette. Julia Ducournau, 2021 Palme d’Or winner Titan Directly inspired by Cronenberg, as is Coralie Farget Subjectone of the most important competition titles of the year, starring Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid, and Margaret Qualley.