The music industry is murder - literally, well, according to the new dark comedy thriller Kill Your Friends from director Owen Harris and writer John Niven, who also wrote the novel of the same name. Mad Max: Fury Road star Nicholas Hoult stars as a young A&R rep for a record label in London during the 1990s, who goes into a murderous rampage in order to keep his job in the high-pressure industry of loud music, drugs and alcohol. While this movie already premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year, it has a 2016 US release date set for April 1. Watch a new trailer for the film below.
You can check out more buzzing news coverage from Music Times right here!
Comparisons to the Christian Bale's performance in American Psycho abound in reviews, which basically only praise Hoult's acting as opposed to the film's overall reception. It should also be mentioned that Hoult's character's job in the film, an A&R agent, isn't really a thing anymore in the music industry. Plus, the music industry is very different currently, so a film set only 20 years ago would definitely seem outdated.
Fortunately for Kill Your Friends, Hoult carries it in a great way, and it has a great score from electronic composer Junkie XL and a soundtrack featuring songs from Radiohead, Oasis, Blur and others.
Watch this new trailer for Kill Your Friends right here (via Slash Film):
Here is the official synopsis of this movie (via Well Go USA Entertainment):
London, 1997; the British music industry is on a winning streak. Britpop bands Blur, Oasis, Radiohead rule the airwaves and Cool Britannia is in full swing. 27-year-old hit chasing A&R man Steven Stelfox is slashing and burning his way through the music business, a world where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public. In an industry of dream-makers, Stelfox refuses to buy into the 'dream' - and despises anyone that does. Fueled by greed, ambition and inhuman quantities of drugs, Stelfox searches for his next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification. Created by an industry that demands success at any price, Stelfox takes the concept of 'killer tunes' to a murderous new level in a desperate attempt to salvage his career. Balanced against the backdrop of the music business and its characters, Stelfox is the ultimate anti-hero: chronically sexist, racist, and everything else-ist.
