Rooney Mara has had an interesting career thus far, and she’s changing things up once again by signing onto a project of a very different sort. Per Variety, the actress will lead a pop star drama from The Childhood of a Leader filmmaker Brady Corbet, which will see recording artist Sia (of "Cheap Thrills" and "Titanium" fame) providing a full soundtrack of original songs. Titled Vox Lux, the story takes place over the course of 15 years, charting “the rise of Celeste from the ashes of a major national tragedy to pop superstardom.” The story begins in 1999, so one assumes 9/11 will play a role in the film, but the idea is to track the important cultural evolutions over the last decade and a half through the eyes of a pop star.
Corbet made his feature debut with The Childhood of a Lader after a career as an actor that ranges from a role on 24 Season 5, Melancholia, and 2014’s Clouds of Sils Maria. For his second feature effort, Corbet isn’t only tackling some ambitious subject matter, but he also will shoot Vox Lux on 65mm large format film, with Kodak helping to back the movie from an equity and marketing perspective. Presumably, this will be sold as a major motion picture event in the realm of film, in every sense of the word. Killer Films and Three Six Zero Entertainment are producing the indie feature, with filming set to get underway in February 2017.
Mara has come a long way from her first major lead role in 2010’s Nightmare on Elm Street remake, catching her big break the same year with a key turn in David Fincher’s masterpiece The Social Network. She subsequently beat out a bevy of famous actresses for the lead in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which netted Mara a Best Actress Oscar nomination. She’s since gone on to work with a variety of talented filmmakers, from Steven Soderbergh (Side Effects) to Spike Jonze (Her) to David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints), earning her second Oscar nomination for last year’s intimate relationship drama Carol.
Recently, while Mara dipped her toe into blockbuster waters with Joe Wright’s disappointing Pan (hey, I liked it well enough!), the actress has been diving deep into a bevy of indie features. She stars opposite Ben Mendelsohn in the brutal sexual assault drama Una, has a supporting turn in The Weinstein Company’s tearjerker Lion, and is playing Mary Magdalene opposite Joaquin Phoenix in the aptly named Mary Magdalene.
Vox Lux no doubt marks yet another intriguing and altogether different turn for Mara, and as an incredibly talented performer, I can’t wait to see what she brings to a pop star role.
