Filmmaker Ari Aster is already well on his way to becoming an iconic cult horror director – specifically, a director of terrifying films about cults. He's about to follow up last year’s existentially nightmarish Hereditary with Midsommar, about a Swedish pagan festival with a truly horrifying line-up (a double helping of Nickelback and latter-day Kings Of Leon, perhaps) – but when it comes to his third feature, the filmmaker could well move away from all things creepy and occult.
Speaking to Empire in the upcoming Once Upon A Time In Hollywood issue, the director revealed where his career could go next – and it’s not what you might expect. “I love musicals, and would love to write one,” he tells Empire. “I love Westerns, too. I love slapstick comedy and romantic comedies.” A complete 180 from harrowing grief-horror into a full-on song-and-dance fest would certainly be a fascinating move for Aster – but his comments mostly speak to his ambition to make bigger films while retaining a sense of authorship.
“I really like working on a large scale – the bigger the canvas the better,” he says. “I’d love to make real spectacle movies. In that sense, I’m very intrigued by the idea of working with certain properties. But I’d always want to be the writer. If I was working from someone else’s screenplay I’d want to get in there, make it my own.”
Read all about Ari Aster’s rise in the new issue of Empire, on sale Thursday 13 June. Midsommar arrives in UK cinemas on 5 July.
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