Following the announcement from Fantasy Film Fest last week that the opening night film this year will be the world premiere of Kill Your Friends, the Fantasy Film Fest website has shared production notes for the film, which includes a full synopsis, cast bios, and even a few words from Tom!
Tom Riley, who plays Stelfox’s nemesis, Parker-Hall, “I thought the script was incredible, savage, brutal and funny, and unlike anything I had ever done before. So I went back and read the book and thought I had to be part of this.”
The production notes offer some fascinating insight into the long, long journey to making the film, finding the producers, directors and finally the right cast. According to John Niven, author and screenwriter of Kill Your Friends, the journey to this film was twenty years in the making.
“Ten years living the life described, then five years between writing the novel and getting it published, and then five years between the screenplay and development hell.” Such toil is doubtless due to the content of the source material, which is often deemed too controversial, its characters without remorse or the comeuppance demanded by the typical morality of fiction. However, this is a telling of Niven’s experience and one he wanted to represent as truthfully as he could."
Kill Your Friends is a dark, satirical and hysterically funny evisceration of the Nineties music business. A time and place populated by frauds, charlatans and bluffers; where ambition is a higher currency than talent, and where it seems anything can be achieved – as long as you want it badly enough. Kill Your Friends will open the Fantasy Film Fest in Berlin on August 5th, and will be released in the UK on November 6th. No other release dates have been announced yet.
