Elle Fanning to star in Nicolas Winding Refn’s ‘Neon Demon’

Elle Fanning is set to star as an aspiring model caught up in a world of beauty and demise in Nicolas Winding Refn’s LA-set horror story The Neon Demon.

Fanning, 16, is said to be in final negotiations for the project, Winding Refn’s first west coast-set project since the critically acclaimed Drive in 2011. “Elle Fanning is a super cool wonder woman and I look forward to going on a terrifying trip with her into The Neon Demon,” the Danish film-maker told The Wrap, before saying similar things on Twitter.

The film, which has been described as a “female-driven horror”, has been co-written by Winding Refn and first-timer Mary Laws, a graduate of Yale’s playwriting programme. “One morning I woke and realised I was both surrounded and dominated by women,” said the film-maker previously of his inspiration for the new project. “Strangely, a sudden urge was planted in me to make a horror film about vicious beauty. After making Drive and falling madly in love with the electricity of Los Angeles, I knew I had to return to tell the story of The Neon Demon.”

Horror appears to be a natural next step for the 44-year-old director, who has spoken of his love for 1974 gore classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and is known for his penchant for on-screen violence. The Neon Demon will start shooting in March on location in LA. It is Winding Refn’s first film since 2013’s blood-spattered Bangkok-set crime thriller Only God Forgives.