Karen Gillan may be best known for her stint on Doctor Who or as part of the ensemble of the two Guardians Of The Galaxy pictures, but the Scottish actress is looking to expand her resume to include screenwriting and directing. She has already completed her first feature – the dark drama The Party’s Just Beginning in which she also stars in as a young woman who can’t cope with the suicide of her best friend – and is starting to develop what could be her next feature-length project, a horror film based on a previous short she made titled Conventional.
“It’s called Axe Wound now,” she revealed this past weekend at the Philadelphia Film Festival where she was picking up the fest’s Artistic Achievement in Independent Film award for The Party’s Just Beginning. She also indicated that as of right now, she is still working on the screenplay. “I can’t say too much except that it’s sooo good.”
Currently, Gillan is set to write and direct, but she may pull triple duty as she did with The Party’s Just Beginning by acting in the film as well. “I keep trying to talk myself out of playing the lead role,” she admits, chuckling. “But I’m finding it really hard to part with, so we’ll see what happens.”
Gillan explains that the project is “a bit of a psychological horror [film], a female horror story more in the vein of Rosemary’s Baby or something like that.”
When appearing at the Tribeca Film Festival this past spring for the US premier of Party, Gillan described the project that would come to be known as Axe Wound as about “a horror movie actress who is on the convention circuit who starred in this movie called Axe Wound 2. And she has had way too much cosmetic surgery and she so she’s going under a little bit.”
Gillan states that horror is one of her favorite genres, and the Oculus star is quick to name some of the directors who have inspired her.
“Stanley Kubrick is my favorite director of all time because of The Shining,” she says. “Wes Craven’s a real favorite of mine, then Mike Flanagan and Ty West.”
The Party’s Just Beginning will be have a limited theatrical release on December 7, followed by availability on VOD. You can watch Conventional below.
