OscaRadar 2011: Black Swan

The two producers behind Shutter Island, Mike Medavoy and Brad Fischer, talk with fearnet.com about Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming thriller:

Can you talk a little bit about Black Swan? Can you talk about what stage of production you’re at?

Fischer: It’s shooting right now.* It’s in production, we’re getting kind of toward the end of photography. It’s shooting here in New York City. (I’ll probably pop by the set ‚Äì Mike and I are gonna go by before we head off to Europe.) It’s going great. The dailies look amazing; it’s Darren Aronofsky and Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis.

What do you think it offers thriller fans?

Fischer: It takes a very kind of dark and disturbing journey ‚Äì in this case Natalie plays a ballerina who has dreams of becoming a star. And she gets that opportunity, and there’s a lot of elements that play out for her, where she starts to wonder if she’s gonna be basically undercut by somebody else, by Mila Kunis’s character in the film. So you’re not sure how much of it is paranoia, how much of it is reality. She starts to work through some of that as the twists and turns start coming. It’s a very cool piece.

Medavoy: Darren actually took it from what it was into the world of ballet, which I thought was a really interesting way to infuse it.

And something you might not expect from the director of The Wrestler.

Medavoy: Yeah, going from a wrestler to a dancer is pretty interesting. And examining that world with a psychological thriller set in that world.

Are you set for a fall release?

Fischer: I don’t think Fox has set the release date yet, Fox Searchlight. But I would expect it’ll be sometime in the fall.

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(* we’ve heard that shooting wrapped Feb 11th)