Nicole Kidman will star in Karyn Kusama’s next film, Destroyer, where she’ll play LAPD detective Erin Bell, who worked undercover in a cult in the California desert, only for the leader to reemerge back into her life. The movie is the second part of what Kusama calls her “L.A. trilogy†that began with her 2015 film, The Invitation. “We just attached Nicole Kidman and it’ll be great. It’s going to be really fun,†Kusama told Vulture. “This one [is] a bigger crime thriller. It’s an incredibly dark story. For some reason I’m just drawn to those things. That’s just where I need to be right now.â€
Kusama thinks of Destroyer as more of a spiritual sequel, rather than a literal one. “It wouldn’t be part two of The Invitation; it would just be another L.A. story,†Kusama explained. As was the case with The Invitation, Kusama will direct a script written by her husband Phil Hay and his writing partner, Matt Manfredi.
Creatively, Kusama says that she’s feeling confident about making work that is less obviously referential and more internal. “I’m really wanting to just live in my own voice right now, and of course it’s terrifying to not be able to say, ‘It’s like that Gordon Willis passage in The Parallax View,’ †said Kusama. “Now I just have to explain it for myself, completely from my own messy interior.â€