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Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has signed on to star in Pendulum, an upcoming horror flick for Protozoa written and directed by Mark Heyman, who authored the screenplay for Black Swan. Gordon-Levitt was recently acclaimed for his appearances in The Dark Knight Rises and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F.
Filming will get underway for Pendulum in New Mexico in March of 2025, with Gordon-Levitt playing the role of a young man named Patrick, who with his partner Abigail attend a New Age retreat there to seek healing after a trauma they both experienced. He soon becomes suspicious of the motivations of the retreat leader. Pendulum is being produced for Protozoa by Darren Aronofsky (of Black Swan and The Whale, for Motel Mojave by Jacob Jaffke (of MaXXXine and Dream Scenario), and for C2 by Dave Caplan (of Longlegs).
Heyman has collaborated with Aronofsky on other film projects, and also wrote The Boogeyman horror film for Disney. He also served as co-writer for The Skeleton Twins, which won a major screenwriting award at the Sundance Film Festival. For television, Heyman also created the Strange Angel project for Paramount+, a television series about a rocket scientist in the 1940s who was a secret admirer of occultist Aleister Crowley.
Black Bear has secured international rights to Pendulum and will present the film to potential buyers at next week’s American Film Market. Domestic rights are being handled by UTA Independent Film Group, CAA Media Finance, and WME Independent.
At the present moment, Darren Aronofsky is working on Caught Stealing, a crime thriller for Sony Pictures starring Austin Butler. The film is about an ex-baseball player who gets caught up in the criminal underworld of New York City in the 1990s. The 55-year old Aronofsky was born in Brooklyn and originally trained as a field biologist in Kenya and Alaska. His interest in film came during his matriculation at Harvard University, where he befriended Dan Schrecker, an aspiring animator, and Sean Gullette, who starred in Pi, Aronofsky’s first film.
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