After the midnight-movie nirvana that was 2018’s Nicolas Cage-starrer Mandy, Panos Cosmatos is finally making a follow-up with Flesh of the Gods, which will be toplined by the none-too-A-list duo of Wagner Moura and Kristen Stewart. A thriller set in a nocturnal 1980s Los Angeles, and combining gothic horror with vampire lore, it is being co-produced by the USA and Germany, and was recently shot on the Canary Islands and in Cologne. Its supporting cast is rounded off by Esmé Creed-Miles (The Chronology of Water, the upcoming new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility – see the news), Roland Møller (Atomic Blonde) and Alba Baptista (Mother Mary, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris). Andrew Kevin Walker – most famous for his David Fincher collaborations Se7en and The Killer – is credited for the screenplay, deriving from a story penned by himself and Cosmatos.

Moura and Stewart portray Raoul and Alex, a married couple in glittering 1980s LA who descend each evening from their luxury skyscraper condo and head into an “electric nighttime realm”. When they cross paths with the mysterious and enigmatic Nameless and her hard-partying crew, Raoul and Alex are seduced into a glamorous, surrealistic world of hedonism, thrills and violence. Todd Banhazl (Hustlers, How to Make a Killing) is credited as director of photography, and is sure to have a task on his hands rendering all the smoky lighting and neon.

Like Mandy (whose sparkling festival run began at Sundance and also took in the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight), the film is an elaborate international co-production, staged by Adam McKay’s Hyperobject Industries, Stewart’s newly established Nevermind Pictures and XYZ Films for the USA, and Augenschein Filmproduktion for Germany. Further financing comes from YouRoc, IPR.VC and Vixens. XYZ Films is also representing international sales; its domestic rights holders, CAA Media Finance and WME Independent, have already sold the movie to A24 for US distribution.

Mandy, whose lush filmmaking matched Cage’s acting histrionics at every turn, was preceded by Cosmatos’s 2010 debut, Beyond the Black Rainbow, which also found an avid cult audience. Born to Greek-Italian director George P Cosmatos and raised in Canada, the junior Cosmatos has built an equal reputation in high-end genre film to his father.