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June 2016 interveiw...
https://thefilmstage.com/features/nicolas-winding-refn-on-the-female-vision-of-the-neon-demon-and-merging-with-elle-fanning/
Years ago, there was word that you were working on a Miami-set, Carey Mulligan-led horror film called I Walk with the Dead. A lot of people believe The Neon Demon is an outgrowth of that.
It is.
Other than, say, the changing of a lead actress and location, how did it clearly evolve from that original concept?
Because I realized I wanted to make a teenage horror film, and it had to be about beauty. Suddenly, from that perspective, I Walk with the Dead was no longer interesting to me. It needed a new cast; I needed a sixteen-year-old girl. So… [Laughs] there were some practicalities as well. You know, I like to say one thing and see where it takes me, because it’s usually somewhere else.
Here, there’s the new process of working with these co-writers: Polly Stenham, an experienced playwright, and Mary Laws, a Yale graduate who’s a relative newcomer. What do they each bring as experienced and nascent voices, and how do you interact with those?
I wrote the story, to begin with, because I had this idea. When I was done figuring out where I wanted to start and wanted to get to, which is the basis of structure, I felt that, along the way, I should feed off as many women as I could. So I first went to the U.K. and hired a very famous playwright called Polly Stenham, and I worked with her for a number of months — and that was cool. Very interesting. But then I kind of felt, “Now I should continue to feed.” So I left the U.K., because, at this time now, L.A. became the place to shoot the movie, and I hired an unknown student at Yale called Mary Laws, who’d never written a screenplay and was also a playwright. Then I worked with her for a number of months.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/now-polly-stenham-gets-ready-to-walk-with-the-dead-8894489.html
"Polly Stenham, one of the country’s most acclaimed young playwrights, is penning an all-female horror script which is to be directed by Denmark’s Nicolas Winding Refn...""It is currently titled I Walk with the Dead..."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/20/the-neon-demon-booed-in-cannes-over-cannibalism-and-necrophilia/
"The film, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starring Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks and Keanu Reeves, was co-written by Polly Stenham, the 29-year-old British playwright hailed as the next big talent of her generation."
"The Telegraph understands Stenham worked on the first draft of the film [I Walk With The Dead], before leaving amicably to develop a play for the National Theatre.
The script was then taken on my Mary Laws, an American Yale Drama School graduate, under whose guidance it “evolved” significantly before the final version hit cinema screens [The Neon Demon].
I Walk With The Dead (IWWTD) is a duplicate project and needs to be cashed out... Jul 19, 20:46
June 2016 interveiw... Jul 20, 12:09
Yes, it was only revealed now that it's the same project. {nm} Jul 20, 16:59
uh... that's why I posted about it. {nm} Jul 20, 18:32