Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier has more "Melancholia" for his fans. The auteur of such brooding films as 'Breaking the Waves' and 'Dancer in the Dark' will take on a psychological disaster movie as his next project. 'Planet Melancholia,' about an enormous planet that looms threateningly close to the Earth, will begin production next year in Europe and is budgeted at about $7 million.According to Variety, von Trier said in an announcement about the film that there would be "No more happy endings!" That, of course, is an understatement given the director's offbeat output. He was one of the founders of Dogme 95, a minimalist cinema movement that created an anti-big-Hollywood-filmmaking code, and his movies regularly dwell on the dark side of human nature. Von Trier is probably best known here for his horror series 'Riget,' which was turned into 'Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital.'
His latest effort, 'Antichrist,' may very well push von Trier's recognition factor a notch higher. The film, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, is a gruesome psychological horror thriller about a grieving couple who retreat to their cabin in the woods after the death of their son. Alone, the pair's fragile mental state deteriorates until the worst happens. At one point, Dafoe's character encounters a fox devouring its own flesh and the animal tosses its head and snarls the words "Chaos reigns." According to another story in Variety, the scene's aphorism has taken off with fans, who have started a #chaosreigns Twitter stream and are demanding T-shirts with the catchphrase -- and the film doesn't even hit theaters until Oct. 23. Chaos may reign but "Nihilism rules!"
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