Cannes First Look: Christopher Abbot in Brandon Cronenberg's Sci-Fi Thriller 'Possessor' (Exclusive)

Cannes First Look: Christopher Abbot in Brandon Cronenberg's Sci-Fi Thriller 'Possessor' (Exclusive)

by Alex Ritman, Hollywood Reporter

05/16/2019

Christopher Abbott — soon to be seen in George Clooney’s Catch 22 TV series — sports a pair of peculiar goggles in this first-look still from Possessor, coming from writer/director Brandon Cronenberg.

Arclight is in Cannes selling international rights to the sci-fi thriller, which also stars Andrea Riseborough, Rossif Sutherland, Tuppence Middleton, Sean Bean and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Cronenberg — whose feature-length directorial debut Antiviral premiered in the Un Certain Regard competition in Cannes in 2012 — wrote the script, which centers around Tasya Vos (Riseborough), an agent for a secretive organization who uses brain-implant technology to inhabit other people’s bodies, driving them to commit assassinations for the benefit of high-paying clients. But something goes wrong on a routine job, and Vos soon finds herself trapped in the mind of an unwitting suspect (Abbott) whose appetite for violence turns out to rival her own.