Jude Law is the third marquee name to walk into Ari Aster’s next picture, and still nobody outside A24 will say what Scapegoat is. Deadline broke the casting on Wednesday, with Law in negotiations to join Scarlett Johansson and Jacob Elordi. His character has not been described, because none of the characters have been.
Aster wrote the script and directs, producing through his Square Peg banner with Lars Knudsen. A24 distributes, which makes Scapegoat the fifth film the company has put out with him. Darius Khondji is shooting it, back with Aster after Eddington. Cameras are expected to roll before the end of the year, and there is still no release date.
Three Stories, None of Them Official
The version with the most mileage has a surgeon losing an internet celebrity on the operating table and living with what comes after. A competing account calls the film a science fiction romance. A third says it is a straight drama with no genre attached at all. A24 has confirmed none of the three, and Aster, who has spent his career letting a premise land in the theater rather than in a press release, is unlikely to settle it early.
Aster’s Horror Ledger Is Two Films Deep
Hereditary and Midsommar made his name and built a good share of the modern A24 horror brand along with it. Beau Is Afraid and Eddington went somewhere else entirely, and both split the room. Whether Scapegoat comes back toward the genre is an open question, and a story about a body on an operating table would not have far to travel.
There Is a ‘Hereditary’ Prequel in a Drawer
Aster said in June that he has written a prequel to Hereditary and that it “never feels like the right time” to make it. He has not developed it any further, and Scapegoat is now the thing standing in front of it.
Law Has Worked This Side of the Street Before
Law is no horror regular, but the credits are there. He spent 1999 getting a port drilled into the base of his spine for David Cronenberg in eXistenZ. He led the first half of The Third Day in 2020, a folk horror series set on an island that does not let people leave. He was in Contagion, which plenty of people rewatched in 2020 and regretted. Aster tends to hire actors who can hold a close-up while something goes wrong behind their eyes, and Law has been doing that for thirty years.
Nothing about the plot is on the record, the cast is three deep and growing, and the firmest detail anyone has is the name of the cinematographer. For an Aster film this far out, that is about the usual allowance.
