In the last issue of French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, David Cronenberg confirms that he'll shoot a new feature film in March of 2023.This one is called "Shrouds", it comes to us from the aborted Netflix project we had previously spoken of. Supposedly, the streaming giant got cold feet after reading the second episode.

The film will be co-produced by Saïd Ben Saïd.

He may have been hinting at retirement, with no film released these last six years, but the legendary 79-year-old Canadian director is not done. He’s set to premiere “Crimes of the Future” at Cannes, what will surely be a controversial sci-fi film.

Vincent Cassel will reunite with David Cronenberg for “The Shrouds,” a new thriller from the director of “A History of Violence” and “Dead Ringers.” The film, which Cronenberg will write as well as direct, centers on Karsh (Cassel), an innovative businessman and grieving widower, who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud.

Cassel and Cronenberg previously teamed up on “Eastern Promises” and “A Dangerous Method.” Their latest collaboration seems very much in the same envelope-pushing vein. According to the official longline for “The Shrouds,” Karsh’s revolutionary business is on the verge of breaking into the international mainstream when several graves within his cemetery are vandalized and nearly destroyed, including that of his wife. While he struggles to uncover a clear motive for the attack, the mystery of who wrought this havoc, and why, will drive Karsh to reevaluate his business, marriage and fidelity to his late wife’s memory, as well as push him to new beginnings.

Saïd Ben Saïd (SBS Productions), Martin Katz (Prospero Pictures) and Michel Merkt will produce the picture, with CAA Media Finance handling U.S. Sales and FilmNation Entertainment overseeing international distribution. Sales will launch at Cannes, where Cronenberg will premiere his latest film, “Crimes of the Future” starring Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux and Kristen Stewart.

Cassel’s credits also include “Ocean’s Twelve,” “Ocean’s Thirteen” and “Black Swan.” He began his career in France in 1988 in television and cinema and got a big break with 1995’s “La Haine.” He went on to act in more than 80 films in France and the United States.

Filming on “The Shrouds” will begin in March 2023.

“We are thrilled to be going on a journey into the newest world from the distinctive imagination of David Cronenberg. His ability to write smart and unconventional screenplays and then translate them into unique experiences on screen makes him a unique voice in film,” said Ben Saïd.

Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg revealed additional cast and shoot details about his next feature, The Shrouds, during a press conference at San Sebastian International Film Festival, where he has been given the festival’s honorary Donostia Award.

French star Lea Seydoux is joining the cast, alongside the previously announced French actor Vincent Cassel, although Cronenberg insisted: “It’s not a French film.” Seydoux also stars in Cronenberg’s latest body horror feature, Cannes premiere Crimes Of The Future, which is screening at San Sebastian.

“It’s a very personal project for me,” said Cronenberg of The Shrouds. “People who know me will know what parts of it are autobiographical.”

The feature is set to shoot in spring 2023 in Cronenberg’s hometown of Toronto.

As previously announced, Cassel, who worked with Cronenberg on Eastern Promises and Dangerous Method, will play a businessman who builds a device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. FilmNation and CAA Media Finance handle sales, while SBS Productions and Prospero Pictures produce.
Future ambitions

Cronenberg admitted he almost gave up making films eight years ago. “I thought I was finished,” he said. However, he confirmed: “I hope to commit more crimes in the future, by making more films.”

He is interested in further pursuing grassroots approaches to filmmaking. “I’ve always been interested in access to technology. You can now make quite a good movie with your phone – if it’s a good phone,” he said. “There were some moments in Crimes Of The Future that were shot with an iPhone.”

The filmmaker described himself as “the junior scientist” with a continued desire to explore “bodies modifying under technology”.

And while his work has been censored in the past, Cronenberg maintained: ”The purpose of my filmmaking is not to shock.”

He spoke to me from Athens during pre-production for his first feature film in seven years. A seven years in which his wife passed away.

“[She] died in that house, in a bed, and it felt when she died, partly, like I died, and I still feel that,” he said. “That corpse is my wife to me. So it’s not just a frivolous horror film. It is a film about love and the transient aspect of being human.”

David Cronenberg on mortality and kissing a silicone corpse in his first short, NFT film - SuperRare Magazine

EXCLUSIVE: Filming is to begin on May 8 in Toronto on David Cronenberg’s next movie, The Shrouds, which will star Vincent Cassel (La Haine), Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds), and Guy Pearce (Memento).

Kruger has replaced Léa Seydoux on the project (as first noted by blog World Of Reel). Cassel, star of Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises and A Dangerous Method, has been aboard since the project was first revealed last summer.

French icon Cassel will play Karsh, an innovative businessman and grieving widower, who builds a novel device to connect with the dead inside a burial shroud. This burial tool installed at his own state-of-the-art – though controversial cemetery allows him and his clients to watch their specific departed loved one decompose in real time. Karsh’s revolutionary business is on the verge of breaking into the international mainstream when several graves within his cemetery are vandalized and nearly destroyed, including that of his wife. While he struggles to uncover a clear motive for the attack, the mystery of who wrought this havoc, and why, drive him to reevaluate his business, marriage and fidelity to his late wife’s memory, as well as push him to new beginnings.

FilmNation and CAA Media Finance were announced as handling sales during the last Cannes market but are no longer aboard. Distribution is now being handled by SBS International, the sales arm of producer Saïd Ben Saïd (Elle), who is producing with Martin Katz for Prospero Pictures. The duo previously produced Cronenberg’s Maps To The Stars.

Sideshow and Janus Films have acquired all U.S. rights to The Shrouds, written and directed by David Cronenberg (Crash, Crimes Of The Future) and are planning a spring 2025 theatrical release.

The film world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it screened In Competition. It played the Toronto International Film Festival as a Special Presentation is set for its U.S. premiere in the Main Slate at the New York Film Festival next month.

The deal was negotiated by Sideshow and Janus Films with SBS International. Producers are Saïd Ben Saïd, Martin Katz and Anthony Vaccarello for Saint Laurent. It’s an SBS, Prospero Pictures & Saint Laurent Productions Film with the participation of Telefilm Canada, Eurimages, Ontario Creates in association with Sphere Films, Crave & CBC Films with the support of Canal +, OCS & the Centre National du Cinema et de L’image Animée.

“Building on a long history with David Cronenberg that has included releases of Videodrome, Scanners, The Brood, Crash, Dead Ringers, and Naked Lunch, Janus Films and Criterion are very proud to be working with Sideshow and Saïd Ben Saïd, Martin Katz and Anthony Vaccarello to premiere The Shrouds, a major new work by the Canadian master in the United States,” said Sideshow/Janus.

The partners called The Shrouds Cronenberg at his wittiest, most personal and romantic in this thought-provoking thriller with knockout performances from Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger.” The film also stars Guy Pearce and Sandrine Holt.

Karsh (Cassel) is a prominent businessman inconsolable since the death of his wife, who invents GraveTech, a revolutionary and controversial technology that enables the living to monitor their dear departed in their shrouds. One night, multiple graves, including that of Karsh’s wife, are desecrated. Karsh sets out to track down the perpetrators.

New distribution label Sideshow has partnered with Janus Films since 2021 to acquire international films that feel notable. They had a hit out of the gate in with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winner Drive My Car, followed by Jerzy Skolimowski’s much decorated EO.

In an eerie, deceptively placid near-future, a techno-entrepreneur named Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has developed a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. While Karsh is still reeling from the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger) from cancer—and falling into a peculiar sexual relationship with his wife’s sister (also Kruger)—a spate of vandalized graves utilizing his “shroud” technology begins to put his enterprise at risk, leading him to uncover a potentially vast conspiracy. Written following the death of the director’s wife, the new film from David Cronenberg is both a profoundly personal reckoning with grief and a descent into noir-tinged dystopia, set in an ominous world of self-driving cars, data theft, and A.I. personal assistants. Offering Cronenberg’s customary balance of malevolence and wit, The Shrouds is a sly and thought-provoking consideration of the corporeal and the digital, the mortal and the infinite.