For the past week I’ve been trying to confirm thatPierce Brosnanwould play a mad doctor in A24’s psychological horror movieFalse Positive, to no avail. Well, the studio itself confirmed today that Brosnan has, in fact, signed on to joinIlana Glazerin the film, which sounds batshit insane.
A24 hoped to keep the premise ofFalse Positiveunder wraps in its announcement (check the ever-dutiful trades), but this logline is so crazy that it inspired a feature I’ve been chipping away at all day, since I wanted to write about this project despite being stonewalled on the casting front.
So… here we go. Glazer (Broad City) andJustin Theroux(The Leftovers) will play a couple who are struggling to conceive a child, so they go see this fertility doctor (Brosnan), only the doctor is crazy and tricks them by getting her pregnant with his own sperm.
I’m sorry, but that is next-level messed up… and a killer premise for a psychological horror movie. There’s no word on whether the film is based on thedisgusting true storyofDonald Cline, a fertility doctor who used his own sperm to inseminate approximately 50 women between the 1970s and 1980s. While he was stripped of his medical license, he ultimately didn’t face any criminal charges for lying to his patients, which is truly sickening.
Anyway,John Leeis directing from a script he co-wrote with Glazer, and the two of them are producing alongsideJonathan Wang. Production starts next week in New York. As for the supporting cast, it will featureJosh Hamilton(Eighth Grade),Gretchen Mol(Rounders),Sophia Bush(Chicago P.D.) andZainab Jah(Homeland).
A24 has been crushing it on the horror front of late betweenHereditaryandThe Witch, not to mention personal favorites likeGreen Room,The Killing of a Sacred Deer, andTusk, and I can’t wait to see what they have up their sleeves with Ari Aster’sMidsommar. Hopefully I still get invited to a future press screening of that film after dishing the dirt aboutFalse Positive, but hey, that’s the job. That the doctor is crazy is part of the premise, not a spoiler, and besides, by the time this film comes out, you won’t even remember this article given the 24-hour news cycle. I’m just saying, this film is going to inspire more than a few think pieces, and I can’t wait to read them all. No word on a release date forFalse Positive, but perhaps we’ll see it in nine months or so.
