If you followed the news around the making of the slasher film Pearl, you know that the project was announced as a surprise prequel to 2022’s X, and the filming of both titles happened in tandem. In an interview with Collider, both movies’ star Mia Goth (Nymphomaniac) revealed that the idea surprised her much like it did the public, with the difference that she found out about it months before. The prequel tells the origin story of the title character, and how she became a deadly psychopath.
During the interview, Goth spoke to Collider’s own Perri Nemiroff about the making of Pearl and revealed that one of the biggest changes that the movie went through was related to its photography. Since the production team was gearing up to pitch a low-budget film, doing it in black and white seemed like a good idea to get it approved, but then Goth and director Ti West were surprised at what that decision ended up causing:
“I was prepping [for] ‘X’, it was probably six weeks into my prep, it was around the middle of October, and [director Ti West] sent me a text message, and he had an idea for a prequel. We FaceTime-d that evening, and he shared with me what he was thinking, and that he wanted me to help him write the script. It was incredibly exciting for me. It was always a big ‘maybe’, there was always a strong chance that [production company] A24 weren’t going to agree to it. But we thought to ourselves that at the very least, [‘Pearl’] would serve as an amazing backstory to older Pearl. […] Originally we wanted it to be a black-and-white film, and we were just thinking from a pure practical point of view: A black-and-white film is cheaper, and we were just trying to incentivize A24 as much as possible to just let us make it. But they weren’t so keen on that [...] And so we thought ‘Okay, well, let’s go to the complete opposite end and make it completely Technicolor’, sort of this demented Disney sort of movie, and actually all worked out for the best, because I don't think the film would be anywhere as good as it is, had it been I black and white.”
Pearl is a prequel that stars one of the key characters in X, and it was filmed in secret while West and Goth mapped out what led the mysterious character become what we witness in X. Much like the original horror film that spawned it, Pearl subverts the genre’s tropes by telling an origin story that isn’t quite you’d expect it to be. Pearl premiered less than two weeks ago, and it’s already being celebrated as one of 2022’s standouts, with even cinema legend Martin Scorsese speaking out to praise West and Goth’s work.
The X-universe is far from done. The franchise went from a standalone film to a trilogy in the blink of an eye, and director Ti West has commented that a whole landscape has been created, and we can expect the third installment, MaXXXine, to look and feel as different as Pearl was from X. He stated that the movie “is an evolution” of the title character, which was also played by Mia Goth. If that sounds confusing, you’ll need to watch X and Pearl to fully grasp what’s going on in that universe.
The story of MaXXXine is still kept under wraps, and a release date is yet to be slated. Pearl is playing in theaters now, and X is available for streaming. You can check out Goth’s full interview with Collider below: