This twisted mother-daughter story was inspired by Hanna Bergholm’s acclaimed HATCHING.
British actress Rosamund Pike (GONE GIRL, HALLOW ROAD, DOOM) will star in FEED, which she’ll also produce through her Primitive Streak banner, along with Magnolia Entertainment’s Shelley Browning, Spooky Pictures’ Steven Schneider, ZQ Entertainment’s Ara Keshishian and Petr Jakl and Agile Films’ Sam Ritzenberg. Leslye Headland (RUSSIAN DOLL, STAR WARS: ACOLYTE) will direct from a screenplay Daniella Isaacs, and sales will begin at the American Film Market next week. The synopsis: “When a desperate mother discovers an obscure collagen supplement that promises to make her tween gymnast daughter an influencer star, the fame and success they crave come fast. But as her daughter goes viral, she begins a monstrous transformation.”
“Long have I wanted to make a film that plays anarchically with our obsession with social media and self-improvement, our desire for fame without notable admirable skill and, let’s put it out there, the monstrosity of modern motherhood,” Pike says. “FEED deals with all these things. It tracks a Momfluencer, Erin, bent on her daughter’s domination of the digital space. Erin believes that success here will protect her daughter from the horrors of our fickle world…won’t it? FEED examines appetite. The dark appetite of online communities; the appetite of a social media landscape that monetizes youth and beauty; the appetite of a mother for her daughter’s success; and the appetite of a teenage girl, hungry for fame, self-empowerment and dominance in her relationship with her single mother. FEED is film that plays in the genre space, and plays into our current fears, as parents, as citizens, of the digital world. It is contemporary and confronting, and I have found my perfect collaborators in Daniella Isaacs and Leslye Headland, both women who know that to be a girl, in a body, is dangerous, febrile, intoxicating and dare we say it, monstrous.”
Adds Headland, “Daniella’s script is audacious, disturbing and deeply human, and Rosamund is among the boldest actors working today. I couldn’t ask for better partners to take on the darker corners of this story and I feel incredibly lucky to be making this film with two women whose work I admire so much.”
