Jaime King and Natasha Lyonne are to star in and produce “Darlene,” a dark-comedy thriller from director Mary Lambert, best known for helming the 1989 adaptation of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary.”
King is attached to play the title role of Darlene, a trailer-park influencer whose desperate pursuit of viral fame spirals into murder, abduction and a blood-soaked flight across the South. Lyonne is attached to play Annie.
Written by Chad Darnell, “Darlene” is described as a “high-octane, pitch-black Southern Gothic fever dream — where ‘Raising Arizona’ meets ‘Nightcrawler’ — satirizing generational poverty, terminal narcissism, and the modern hunger for digital immortality.” Production is set for late summer in Louisiana.
The film follows Darlene, a larger-than-life online personality who has built her following around a pregnancy that isn’t real. As her lie begins to unravel, her hunger for validation spirals into something far darker, drawing a devastated father into a desperate search and exposing a culture more obsessed with spectacle than consequence.
King and Emma Comley will produce through Hooligan Dreamers Prods., while Lyonne will produce through Animal Pictures and Lambert produces through Vertical Films.
