The Big Picture
- A24 releases the first trailer for Love Lies Bleeding, featuring Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian in a cutthroat world of bodybuilding and a budding romance.
- The film showcases a small town with intense family problems, money, violence, and a murder that ties the bond between the two main characters even tighter.
- Love Lies Bleeding is Rose Glass’s sophomore feature, and A24 has an impressive lineup of projects set for 2024, along with a recent deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to release content on HBO and Max.
It’s been a full year and a half since it was announced that Academy Award nominee Kristen Stewart would star in Rose Glass’s A24 romantic thriller, Love Lies Bleeding. Since then, the other big piece of news to come from the production was the involvement of Katy O’Brian, whose on-screen career has taken off over the last year in titles including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Mandalorian. Today, the studio has dropped the first trailer, which reveals the cutthroat world of bodybuilding and the budding relationship between two of its competitors.
Set to the classic tune “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat, Stewart’s Lou has some pretty intense family problems and an even more intense crush on O’Brian’s Jackie in the trailer for Love Lies Bleeding. While Lou has grown up and lived in this gun-obsessed town her entire life, Jackie is completely new to the area and is having a tough time fitting in. Money and violence rule the streets here and, when Jackie and Lou find themselves involved with a murder, their bond gets tied even tighter. Glass’s latest feature can’t help but drum up visions of the Wachowskis‘ classic erotic crime thriller, Bound, but with fewer mob connections and (somehow) even more sexual tension. The movie also stars Ed Harris as Lou’s father, with ensemble performances from Jena Malone, Dave Franco, and Anna Baryshnikov.
Love Lies Bleeding is Glass’s sophomore feature, following her critically celebrated directorial debut with 2019’s Saint Maud. During an appearance earlier this year on an installment of Perri Nemiroff’s Ladies Night, O’Brian shared that the first draft of Love Lies Bleeding had a lot of commonality with Saint Maud before it was reshaped into more of its own story. Still, O’Brian said that there were similarities between the two but that the new feature would focus more on the budding romance aspect between O’Brian and Stewart’s characters, tossing in the very interesting tidbit that it was “shot like a Western.” Teasing the madness to come, she added, “It’s Rose Glass, it’s A24, so it’s gonna be a little wild.”
What Else Does A24 Have Coming Out?
Known for being the number one destination for filmmakers to go as nuts as they want with their projects, A24 is the home of such classics as Ari Aster’s Hereditary, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Robert Eggers’s The Lighthouse. 2023 saw the release of titles including the Nicolas Cage-led feature, Dream Scenario, the year’s biggest horror flick, Talk to Me, and Sofia Coppola’s return to directing in Priscilla. Along with Love Lies Bleeding, 2024 boasts an impressive lineup of projects set to come from the indie studio, including MaXXXine, Problemista, and Civil War. The studio also recently struck up a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery that will see its content made available on HBO and its streamer, Max. This means that subscribers can expect to see movies like Priscilla and The Iron Claw arrive on the platform following their theatrical runs.
Love Lies Bleeding is in theaters on March 8, 2024. Stay tuned to Collider for more information and check out the trailer below:
