Nicole Kidman Joins Exciting New Film ‘The Young People’ From Longlegs Director Osgood Perkins and NEON
No sooner has Osgood Perkins finished his latest film, “Keeper” (which is slated for wide release on November 14), than he’s hard at work on his next one, “The Young People.” This forthcoming picture is, unsurprisingly, a horror film. Filming began last month and should conclude in December. Most of its cast members were announced in late October, but in the last few days, the name of one longtime A-lister was added to the lineup.
A Mysterious Fright Flick from a Very Prolific Director
If Fangoria were to invent a Chainsaw Award for Hardest-Working Director, its 2025 recipient would almost certainly have to be Osgood Perkins. This horror director, son of the late, iconic “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins, directed the 2024 detective thriller “Longlegs,” which was released in July of last year to great critical and commercial success. It only took him until March of this year to make the Stephen King horror-comedy adaptation “The Monkey,” and then off he went to make the supernatural toxic-relationship horror flick “Keeper” in almost as short a time frame. It’s unclear exactly when “The Young People” will come out, but it will definitely be sometime in 2026.
The makers of “The Young People” have been similarly cryptic about the story and even the premise of this film. At present, there exist only two known clues: a picture of the film’s star, Lola Tung, in character resting her head on the rim of a bathtub filled with inky-black water, and a measly peek at the script afforded by a tease that the film’s distributor, NEON, posted on Instagram on August 28.
In the latter picture, the only visible passage reads thus: “One of The Old Ones steps forward, drops its robe to reveal — The naked“- (The word “naked” is partially obscured by the top page, and it’s impossible to clearly make out whatever noun it’s describing). This post also described the film as “A Bad Trip.”
An Intriguing Cast Mix – With One Exciting New Name to it
Throughout his 10-year-old career, Perkins has collaborated with uniformly excellent casts, including such actors as Emma Roberts, Sophia Lillis, Maika Monroe, Nicholas Cage, Theo James, and Elijah Wood.
The cast list for “The Young People” is as auspicious as one could hope for, including Tatiana Maslany (“The Monkey” and “Keeper”), the aforementioned Lola Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”), Nico Parker (“The Last of Us”), Johnny Knoxville (“Jackass,” “Men in Black II,” “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”), and Heather Graham, who has been acting for 40 years in such films and shows as “Twin Peaks,” “Boogie Nights,” “The Hangover” films, and “Californication.”
As of November 10, we know (via Variety) that Nicole Kidman has joined the cast of “The Young People.” Kidman is an Oscar-winning actress whose career spans over 40 years and includes comedies (“To Die For,” “Paddington”), dramas (“Eyes Wide Shut,” “The Northman,” her Oscar win “The Hours”), and an acclaimed role in the 2001 period supernatural horror flick “The Others.”
Unanswered for now is the question of what characters either Kidman or any of these other assorted talents will be portraying in “The Young People.” Tung and Parker belong in the film’s titular group. Have any or all of the other aforementioned cast members been cast as the “Old Ones”? Are these characters inhuman, given how the determiner “its” is attributed to one of them in the script? What is their relationship with the young people? These and many other mysteries will be answered in time.
