Zoë Kravitz has signed on to star in Biter, a new dark comedy based on a short story by Cat Person‘s Kristen Roupenian, part of her 2019 debut short story collection You Know You Want This.
The film will tell the story of a young woman who fantasizes about biting one of her co-workers. Kravitz will produce via her company This Is Important, with Paperclip Ltd and Winterlight Pictures co-producing.
This is Roupenian’s second short story to be adapted after Cat Person, which recently debuted at Sundance.
That one’s a darkly comedic thriller that looks at the brief relationship between 20-year-old college sophomore Margot and the somewhat-older Robert from the perspective of both characters, as a means of commenting on modern dating and power dynamics.
Michelle Ashford adapted the script for the film version, which stars Emilia Jones (CODA) and Nicholas Braun (Succession).
Roupenian also penned the story for Halina Reijn‘s recent A24 hit Bodies Bodies Bodies, has multiple other features in development, and is currently at work on a novel. So with the addition of Biter, she is having a real moment.
A writer and director for Biter are not yet attached. Kravitz comes onto the project after wrapping production on her directorial debut Pussy Island, a thriller she co-wrote that will star Naomi Ackie and Channing Tatum. There’s buzz around that too, which MGM recently acquired in a competitive situation.
Winterlight Pictures founder Chris Goldberg said in a statement to Deadline:
“As an IP-driven company, short story-based projects have become a huge part of our slate. There is nobody who has broken out in the world of short stories quite like Kristen Roupenian.
We are so proud to be working with such an exceptional talent and voice of her generation. We were also blown away by Zoë Kravitz in Kimi and The Batman, and could not be more excited to collaborate with someone so multi-talented and quickly emerging as one of the world’s biggest movie stars.”
As mentioned, Kravitz is coming off key roles in The Batman and Steven Soderbergh‘s tech thriller Kimi, as well as Hulu’s short-lived series adaptation of High Fidelity.
Although there’s little synopsis to go on, Biter sounds like the kind of film that will get people talking. We’ll wait and see who joins Kravitz in front of and behind the camera.
#Peace.Love.Biter
