After only two films, Jane Schoenbrun has built a small cult following with “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and “I Saw the TV Glow,” the latter distributed by A24.
Schoenbrun is back. “Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, screening in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, but A24 isn’t returning to back up this film — rather, Mubi is taking the lead, and with a budget that’s reportedly under $10M, some have wondered why.
In a new interview with THR, Schoenbrun explains that the project was turned down by every studio, including A24 and Neon, before finding its current home at Mubi. The key point is that the script and concept were considered too unconventional, too formally risky, and too genre-blurring for studio development, which led to a series of pass-offs.
Everyone except for Mubi passed on this movie, to be totally blunt,” they say. “Every major studio and distributor passed on the film, and I think it’s because of the limits of what kinds of queer and trans stories are deemed commercial or not commercial.
Schoenbrun believes the studio rejections weren’t framed as outright dismissals of quality, but more as hesitation around marketability—particularly the film’s tonal mix of queer coming-of-age material and heightened horror.
Furthermore, Schoenbrun expresses frustration with what they describe as a “post-woke, post-Biden” climate, where few trans artists are being given comparable budgets, calling it a serious gap in the industry.
That said, what Schoenbrun fails to note is that, despite the acclaim, “I Saw the TV Glow” grossed around $5M worldwide at the box office. It was not the breakout commercial hit A24 expected it to be, but rather the kind of release where most of its value came from critical reception.
‘Camp Miasma,’ starring Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder, centers on the revival of a notorious slasher series. This time, however, the story takes a darker turn when the new director develops an intense fixation on the enigmatic actress who originally portrayed the “final girl.” As the obsession deepens, the two women descend into a frenzy of psychosexual mania.
I’ll be seeing this film on Wednesday. It is set to hit theaters on August 7 via Mubi.