A24’s The Masque of the Red Death Goes Maximalist as Léa Seydoux Joins Cast
A24 is once again digging into classic horror literature and dragging it somewhere far stranger, filthier, and more decadent. Léa Seydoux has officially joined Mikey Madison in The Masque of the Red Death, a boldly revisionist reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe’s 1842 gothic short story, and this version sounds determined to embrace excess at every possible turn.
The film is written and directed by Charlie Polinger, following his debut feature The Plague, and is being positioned as a darkly comedic and wildly modern spin on Poe’s famously bleak allegory. Where the original story explored the inevitability of death, Polinger’s version appears far more interested in what happens when wealth, power, and denial collide in a sealed-off environment already rotting from the inside.
A24’s The Masque of the Red Death Reimagines Poe Through Class and Excess
Mikey Madison, coming off Anora and her scene-stealing role in Scream (2022), will play twin sisters divided by class. One has been raised within the noble elite, protected behind castle walls as a plague devastates the outside world. The other has grown up among the peasantry, exposed to suffering, loss, and the brutal consequences of the ruling class’s indifference.
When the long-lost twin infiltrates the castle, the film shifts into a closed-system nightmare driven by shifting alliances, resentment, and ambition. The castle itself becomes a pressure cooker, a space where indulgence and paranoia spiral together, and where denial is maintained through excess rather than ignorance.
Early descriptions paint this as Poe filtered through A24’s appetite for social allegory and moral rot, complete with orgies, opium use, political scheming, and inevitable decapitations. It is less about fear creeping in quietly and more about watching decadence collapse under its own weight.
Léa Seydoux Joins as a Scheming Lady-in-Waiting
Léa Seydoux is set to play a lady-in-waiting described as quietly conniving and ruthlessly ambitious, plotting her rise through the aristocratic hierarchy while chaos brews around her. It is a role that fits comfortably within Seydoux’s career of morally complex characters, from Blue Is the Warmest Color and Saint Laurent to blockbuster territory in No Time to Die.
Her casting adds a layer of European gothic credibility to the project, grounding its heightened satire in something recognisably decadent and dangerous. In a story obsessed with power structures and survival, Seydoux’s presence suggests a character who understands exactly how to thrive while others fall apart.
Charlie Polinger Pushes Poe Into Dark Comedy Territory
While Poe’s original The Masque of the Red Death centered on Prince Prospero and his doomed masquerade ball, Polinger’s adaptation is far less concerned with fidelity and far more focused on thematic translation. Class division, denial, contagion, and moral decay remain central, but are refracted through a deliberately maximalist, satirical lens.
Polinger has described the film as operating firmly in dark comedy territory, noting that while the tone differs from The Plague, both films explore how people behave when trapped together in confined spaces. That claustrophobic social pressure feels especially appropriate for a story about the elite pretending the outside world no longer exists.
Production Details and What to Expect
The film is being produced by Julia Hammer and Erik Feig through Picturestart, with James Presson and Lucy McKendrick also producing. Polinger serves as an executive producer on the project. Production is scheduled to begin in Hungary in February, a location increasingly favored for stylised genre filmmaking thanks to its gothic architecture and cost-effective period backdrops.
Poe adaptations have a long history of either playing things painfully straight or veering wildly off course. The Masque of the Red Death sounds firmly committed to the latter approach, and with A24 backing it, that feels entirely intentional. In a world still reckoning with real pandemics and obscene wealth disparity, a viciously funny, morally rotten Poe remix feels uncomfortably well timed.
If nothing else, this is shaping up to be one of A24’s most unapologetically indulgent horror projects to date, and one that seems less interested in asking whether death will arrive, and more fascinated by how long the powerful think they can party before it does.
