Matt Smith (“House of the Dragon”) and Imogen Poots (Green Room) are attached to star in the absurd mystery-thriller The Salamander Lives Twice, Deadline reports.
The project reunites director Ant Timpson and writer Toby Harvard for their third film following 2019’s Come to Daddy and 2024’s Bookworm.
Smith will star as a debonair stranger who washes ashore on a remote island wearing a Rolex and holding an briefcase he can’t open, with no memory of who he is or why he is there.
Taken in by the sole inhabitants – Iris, a glamorous wine-soaked matriarch, her erudite daughter Goggy (Poots) and Baby, their giant naked butler – he is drawn into their bizarre and decaying world.
But this is no accident. What begins as sanctuary turns into something far stranger, far darker – a world of pent-up revenge, sinister family betrayal, and shocking violence.
Emma Slade & Roxi Bull of Velvet Moss (Come to Daddy) and Andy Starke (Possessor) of Anti-Worlds will produce.
The team is eyeing a February 2027 shoot on a remote island. Embankment Films has boarded the project for sales ahead of next month’s Cannes film market.
Embankment’s Archie Faulks describes the film as “a wildly entertaining Hitchcockian thriller served up on a gourmet platter of absurdist comedy and psychological suspense. It keeps audiences guessing right up to an ending they won’t see coming and won’t forget.”
An earlier version of The Salamander Lives Twice was set to star Vera Farmiga and Adrien Brody back in 2020, but the pandemic halted that iteration.
