The upcoming summer issue of Fangoria Magazine will be making history by featuring multi-million record-selling singer and songwriter The Weeknd on the cover, showcasing Oscar-nominated FX makeup artist Mike Marino's garish handiwork. Though the Weeknd will be joining ranks with Michael Jackson and Ozzy Osbourne, this will be the first time ever that a pop star snags both the cover and a Fangoria cover story for his ongoing collaboration with Marino.
Abel Tesfaye, known to fans as The Weeknd, is an Academy Award-nominee and multi-Grammy winning singer and songwriter known for the darker themes in his lyrics and videos. What caught the horror magazine's attention, however, were the continued collaborations with makeup FX artist Marino. There's no doubt you've seen Marino's work, which most recently made waves in Matt Reeves' The Batman, when he transformed an unrecognizable Colin Farrell into The Penguin. His artistry also earned him an Oscar-nominee for the recreation of "his hero Rick Baker’s work from the original, as well as developing new creations" for Coming 2 America starring Eddie Murphy. Now, Marino is being commemorated for his transformations with The Weeknd in the videos for "Gasoline," "Save Your Tears," "Sacrifice," "Out of time" and more.
Fangoria's editor-in-chief Phil Nobile Jr. said:
“Mike’s ongoing, mind-blowing work with The Weeknd is one of the most exciting talent/artist collabs happening in entertainment right now. Mike told us about watching ‘The Making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller’ as a kid and wanting to be Rick Baker when he grew up; to see that childhood wish manifest in the form of the great stuff he and his team are doing in The Weeknd’s music videos made this cover choice a no-brainer for us.”
The Weeknd's videos often depict the demise of the artist's previous personas in violent and horrific ways, akin to the scenes you'd expect to find in horror films. Starting with his 2020 album After Hours, The Weeknd began work with Marino for the 2020 VMAs, showing up with a gruesome broken nose and busted lip, and deep purple bruising around his eyes. The effects were jarring, and disturbing to see amidst the glamorous Music Awards attendees. Together the two graduated to his video for "Save Your Tears," in which The Weeknd appeared in an unsettlingly realistic plastic-surgery-gone-wrong look. Marino applied prominent and plump cheek and lip injections that gave the singer a devilishly frightening appearance as he deadpanned to a masked audience.
For succeeding videos, the pair only up the ante as Marino works his FX magic to showcase the singer's eerie evolution through purgatory, chronicled by the nightmarish videos for "Sacrifice" and "Gasoline." In "Sacrifice" Marino applies corpse-like makeup to a cult member and The Weeknd's life force is sapped, leaving him old and decaying. By "Gasoline" The Weeknd is shown as his aged persona, navigating through a mass of dancing bodies that alternate between normal and demonic in something you'd expect to see straight out of Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead. It's even Marino's impeccable effects that you see on the cover of The Weeknd's 2022 album, Dawn FM.
Other notable projects that Marino has worked for include HBO's true-crime series The Staircase, Martin Scorsese's The Irishman, Black Swan, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Joker. It's his outstanding work with The Weeknd and the thread of horror that weaves through his albums and videos that earned the duo the upcoming Fangoria cover. The issue will release later this summer.
Check out the Fangoria cover below and Marino's work for The Weeknd's album Dawn FM on his Instagram post below:
