NEON's upcoming horror flick Infinity Pool has been slapped with an NC-17 rating, but it may not stick. The film comes from Brandon Cronenberg, the son of genre legend David Cronenberg who's recently been carving his own way in horror with movies like Antiviral and Possessor. Mia Goth, who can currently be seen on the big screen as the star of the X prequel Pearl, stars in Infinity Pool alongside Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, The Northman). It will be released in the United States by NEON with Elevation Pictures handling Canadian distribution.
Over at FilmRatings.com (per JoBlo), the official rating for Infinity Pool has been revealed. It has been rated NC-17 for "some graphic violence and sexual content." While an NC-17 rating is not always a death knell for a film, such as the case with the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde heading to Netflix where that doesn't really matter, it can be a problem for other films with planned theatrical releases. NEON has formally appealed that NC-17 rating, so this could ultimately get dropped down to an R rating before release, though this may mandate some footage from Infinity Pool getting snipped.
An official logline for Infinity Pool is as follows:
James and Em are young, rich, in love, and on vacation. Their all-inclusive resort boasts island tours and gleaming beaches. But outside of the hotel gates waits something much more dangerous and seductive, beyond the edge of paradise.
Cronenberg wrote and directed Infinity Pool. The film is produced by Film Forge's Karen Harnisch and Andrew Cividino alongside Rob Cotterill and Elevation Pictures' Noah Segal and Christina Piovesan. Daniel Kresmery and Jonathan Halperyn are co-producing for Hero Squared while Anita Juka co-produces for 4 Film. Skarsgard is executive producing with NEON's Tom Quinn, Jeff Deutchman, and Emily Thomas, as well as Topic Studios' Michael Bloom, Maria Zuckerman, and Ryan Heller. Celluloid Dream's Hengameh Panahi and Charlotte Mickie are also executive producing.
Blonde Has Stuck With Its NC-17 Rating
In the case of Blonde, there were no appeals made for the Marilyn Monroe biopic's NC-17 rating. Director Andrew Dominik has been unapologetic about the rating, feeling that he wanted to include the film's racier scenes as a way of staying honest about Monroe's real-life story, no matter what rating this brought about.
"It's an NC-17 movie about Marilyn Monroe," Dominik said, via ScreenDaily. "It's kind of what you want, right? I want to go and see the NC-17 version of the Marilyn Monroe story. It's a demanding movie. If the audience doesn't like it, that's the f-----g audience's problem. It's not running for public office."
For her part, star Ana de Armas felt that the NC-17 rating wasn't even justified for Blonde. She told THR after the film was given its rating that she's seen other movies and shows with more explicit content getting an R rating, so she doesn't quite understand.
"I can tell you a number of shows or movies that are way more explicit with a lot more sexual content than Blonde," she said. "But to tell this story it is important to show all these moments in Marilyn’s life that made her end up the way that she did. It needed to be explained. Everyone [in the cast] knew we had to go to uncomfortable places. I wasn’t the only one.”