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PRODUCTION Italy / USA

Luca Guadagnino sets to work on Suspiria, an Amazon co-production

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- The eagerly awaited remake of the Dario Argento classic is in post after principal photography wrapped in Berlin; Amazon Studios has acquired the worldwide distribution rights

Luca Guadagnino sets to work on Suspiria, an Amazon co-production
Director Luca Guadagnino on the set of Suspiria (© Amazon Studios)

Following the positive reception that his movie Call Me by Your Name [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Luca Guadagnino
film profile
]
garnered from press and public alike at Sundance and the Berlinale, Luca Guadagnino is hard at work on the post-production of his eagerly awaited remake of the Dario Argento classic Suspiria [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, which celebrated its 40-year anniversary in January this year with a restored 4K version. The shoot for the remake took place between October and December 2016, mainly in Varese, Italy, before continuing in February and March in Berlin. Amazon Studios acquired the worldwide distribution rights to the project last year and is involved on the production side, together with Italy’s Frenesy Film Company (Guadagnino and Marco Morabito), First Sun Films (Massimiliano Violante and Marco Morabito) and Memo Films (Francesco Melzi d’Eril), besides US outfit Mythology Entertainment.

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For Suspiria, the Palermo-born director has assembled a stellar cast consisting almost entirely of US and European actresses: Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz, Mia Goth, Jessica Harper (the star of the original Dario Argento version when she was just 27), Sylvie Testud, Malgorzata Bela and Tilda Swinton, a pet actress of Guadagnino’s in some of his movies, including the recent A Bigger Splash [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Luca Guadagnino
film profile
]
. The iconic British thesp, who plays the unsettling Madame Blanc, the deputy director of the dance academy, was snapped on set in Berlin disguised as an old man, which suggests a very different version of the film (the screenplay was penned by David Kajganich, who also wrote A Bigger Splash). This theory has been reinforced by another one of the stars, British actress Mia Goth, who told the Bloody Disgusting website, “I think people are going to be really pleasantly surprised to realise that it’s really not a remake at all. I think people are going to be really shocked […] We wanted to take it to a completely different place. Luca has a very good eye for aesthetics – I think it will be pretty spectacular visually.” The director himself told Variety that the movie “is set in Berlin in 1977, when the city was divided into East and West. It’s a film about guilt and motherhood. It has no primary colours in its colour palette, unlike the original. It will be cold, evil and really dark.” 

In the original, a young American girl arrives at the Fribourg Dance Academy with the intention of improving her ballerina skills. On the night of her arrival, she bumps into one of her classmates, who is running away from something, terrified; shortly afterwards, the young woman is found brutally murdered together with her friend. Before too long, the girl discovers that an ancient, supernatural curse looms over the academy.

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(Translated from Italian)

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