Xavier Dolan Backtracks on Retirement, Returns to Filmmaking with Horror Feature

Out filmmaker Xavier Dolan's retirement has proven to be short-lived. The Canadian wunderkind has announced that he's now at work on a horror movie set in the 1800s.

"Dolan has dusted off a project he wrote before the pandemic, and is now putting the finishing touches" on the screenplay, World Of Reel reported.

The 35-year-old auteur announced the project during an appearance on the French language Sans Filtre ("Without Filter") podcast, Ion Cinema relayed, explaining "that his upcoming project explores themes of fear, failure, and rejection."

"Curiously, he felt some of these exact sentiments when he moved into the three following features after 'Mommy' in 'It's Only the End of the World' (2016), 'The Death and Life of John F. Donovan' (2018) and 'Matthias & Maxime' (2019)," Ion Cinema added, referencing the filmmaker's most recent films, which failed to achieve the same level of critical adoration of his earlier work.

The new movie "would be shot in France and would contain a lot of exterior scenes (we bet he'll re-team with cinematographer André Turpin)," Ion Cinema detailed, adding that Dolan "is aiming for a fall 2025 shoot – so we are looking at the earliest a 2026 drop."

Dolan had struck a downbeat note in announcing his retirement last year, telling Spanish newspaper El Pais, "I don't feel like committing two years to a project that barely anyone sees," and adding, "I put too much passion into it to have these disappointments."

"It makes me wonder if my filmmaking is bad, and I know it's not," Dolan added.

The stresses of a deteriorating social and political scene globally also seem to have contributed to Dolan's anomie. He told the press last year that he was "afraid of a civil war caused by intolerance," and added, "I don't understand what is the point of telling stories when everything around us is falling apart."

"Art is useless and dedicating oneself to the cinema, a waste of time," Dolan declared in a bleak summation.

Since his 2009 feature film debut, "I Killed My Mother," Dolan, a former child actor, has made eight features and a limited series for television. Given his youth and the relatively short span of time in which he generated his output, burnout doesn't seem an unlikely cause of Dolan's wish to retire.

But, Ion Cinema relayed, "After a cool volunteer job as the head of the Un Certain Regard jury this summer, Xavier Dolan's creative spark was reignited."

Welcome back, Xavier Dolan!