LOS ANGELES, Oct 5 — The star of Top of the Lake and Big Little Lies is to play a police officer in a film about dangerous cult leaders and undercover infiltration.
Nicole Kidman will lead Destroyer, as the crime thriller's first named cast member.
She's to become a Los Angeles police detective who is sent back to inhabit an undercover role from years before.
The leader of a cultish gang is back on law enforcement radar and Kidman’s character has to reassume a false identity, revisiting past traumas in the process, so that justice can be done.
One of the movie’s early backers is producer Fred Berger, who himself worked on La La Land, and talked up the pedigrees of both Kidman and film director Karyn Kusama.
“Nicole is at the top of her game — doing tremendously exciting work — and Karyn is one of the most assured voices working today," he said.
“It’s a powerful combination, sure to produce an iconic character, and I feel lucky to be in their company,” he concluded, also namechecking the movie’s writers.
Kidman, who was Oscar nominated for musical Moulin Rouge, family tragedy Rabbit Hole and biographical drama Lion, won a statuette for her performance in Virginia Woolf biopic (and literary adaptation) The Hours.
In 2017, she’s co-starred in TV crime thrillers Big Little Lies and Top of the Lake, wartime drama The Beguiled, buddy comedy The Upside, romcom How to Talk to Girls at Parties and unnerving mystery The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
Kusama filmed Michelle Rodriguez boxing drama Girlfight, Charlize Theron sci-fi action movie Aeon Flux, and the Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried horror comedy "Jennifer's Body" before turning to TV, directing episodes of Masters of Sex, The Man in the High Castle, Billions and Half and Catch Fire among others.
Screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi have switched genres from police comedy to police thriller for Destroyer.
Other projects include Aeon Flux and Kusama's 2015 horror The Invitation. — AFP-Relaxnews
