Sonoya Mizuno, known as the actress and star of Ex Machina, Devs, House of the Dragon, and Crazy Rich Asians, makes her directorial debut.
Stages is being produced by A24 and Film4, and will be produced by Mizuno’s regular collaborator Alex Garland, along with Peter Rice and Agile Films’ Miles Payne and Sam Litzenberg.
Details about the project are still being kept under wraps, but the film is said to be inspired by Mizuno’s own dance background. In addition to acting, Mizuno also trained at the Royal Ballet School. She later danced with ballet companies such as the English National Ballet, the Dresden Semper Opera Ballet, and the Scottish Ballet. Ex Machina marked his on-screen acting debut, playing a disco-dancing android alongside Oscar Isaac. In “Devs,” also written and directed by Garland, she played the lead role as a software engineer at a quantum computer company who investigates the sudden suicide of her boyfriend.
At the time “Devs” aired, Mizuno told Variety that although she wasn’t particularly tech-savvy herself, the show confirmed and questioned her beliefs about the pervasiveness of big technology.
“I remember reading the script and it was something like, ‘I want to tell a story about technology leaders controlling how our society operates because our government doesn’t have the structure to support the rapid growth of our industry,’ and it felt like a great opportunity to do that,” she said.
A24 and Film have previously worked together on projects including last year’s Oscar winner “The Zone of Interest” and the drama “We Live in Time.”
