Writer/director Kiah Roache-Turner’s eight-legged adventure Sting has wrapped in Sydney with a cast that includes Ryan Corr, Alyla Browne, Penelope Mitchell, Robyn Nevin, Noni Hazlehurst, and Jermaine Fowler.
Browne stars as Charlotte, a rebellious 12-year-old girl obsessed with comic books.
She comes across a small spider after it emerges from an egg that smashes through the window of a rundown New York apartment building.
After naming the creature Sting, Charlotte’s fascination with the creature increases as it gets bigger.
As it continues to grow at an alarming rate, Sting’s appetite for blood becomes insatiable and soon Charlotte’s stepfather Ethan (Corr) and mother (Mitchell), along with the other eccentric characters of the building, realise they are 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 is produced by Jamie Hilton and Michael Pontin via See Pictures together with Pictures in Paradise’s Chris Brown. It was co-financed by Align and also received major production investment from Screen Australia.
Additional finance was provided by Create NSW, Cumulus VFX, and Spectrum Entertainment. Weta Workshop, led by creative director Richard Taylor, created the physical puppet effects for the project out of their workshop in New Zealand.
Cornerstone is handling worldwide sales for the project, having taken the project to Cannes last year. Studiocanal will release Sting in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Benelux. Additional deals have been secured with Lucky Red (Italy), Diamond Films (Latin America, Spain, Portugal), Nordisk (Scandinavia), Kinoswiat (Poland), Pasatiempo Pictures (Baltics, CIS), Karantanija (Ex-Yogoslavia), Italia (Middle East), Filmfinity (South Africa) and Terry Steiner International (airlines).
Studiocanal SVP for UK acquisitions and production, Alison Meese, expected Roache- Turner’s story to have broad appeal.
“We fell for Kiah’s wildly effective script which, united with his inventive direction, WETA’s unbeatable creature FX work, and the near-universal primal fear of spiders, we’ve got a treat on our hands for horror audiences across the Studiocanal territories,” she said.
Align EVP of production Martin Metz said he was pleased to be teaming up with Cornerstone again, following last year’s Good Luck To You Leo Grande.
“We couldn’t be happier to team up with Cornerstone again to bring Kiah’s both terrifying and stunning vision to life”.