Writer and director Kiah Roache-Turner will turn his attention from zombies to spiders for a new project set to commence sales at Cannes.
After working on the Wyrmwood franchise with his brother Tristan, Roache-Turner will take audiences on another monstrous ride with Sting, a story about an initially small spider that comes under the care of a 12-year-old girl.
Emerging from an egg that smashes through the window of a rundown New York apartment building, the creature is found by the rebellious Charlotte and named Sting.
As Charlotte’s fascination with Sting increases, so does its size. Growing at a monstrous rate, Sting’s appetite for blood becomes insatiable. Soon Charlotte’s family and the eccentric characters of the building realise that they are all trapped, hunted by a ravenous supersized arachnid with a taste for human flesh, with Charlotte being the only one who knows how to stop it.
Sting will be produced by Jamie Hilton and Michael Pontin via See Pictures together with Pictures in Paradise’s Chris Brown.
The film will start principal photography later this year in Sydney. Weta Workshop, led by creative director Richard Taylor, will create the physical puppet effects for the project out of their workshop in New Zealand.
Cornerstone will handle the worldwide sales for the project.
Co-presidents Alison Thompson and Mark Gooder commented said they were “very excited” to release Sting into the Cannes market.
“Kiah has written a hugely entertaining script that delivers multiple thrills and twists in an extremely audience-friendly way,” they said.
Kiah Roache-Turner made his feature film debut with 2015’s Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead which premiered at Fantastic Fest in Austin. His follow-up feature, Nekrotronic, starring Monica Bellucci, premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.
More recently, the second Wyrmwood film, Wyrmwood: Apocalypse, won the Audience Award at the 2021 Sydney Film Festival.