Photo: Courtesy of Lionsgate.UPDATE:
Alas, Pussy Riot will not be appearing in the Spring Breakers sequel. The group tweeted Sunday, "We're super surprised to hear this crazy stuff on any kind of talks about us and the Spring Breakers. Looks like somebody's cheesy joke!" It added, cheekily, "Besides, we don't even have spring break in Russia - down here we get breaks from one prison term till the next one!"
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED at 12:15PM: There's a less-than-polite word for what the Spring Breakers sequel is shaping up to be, but let's just go with "WTF" instead.
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Spring Breakers: Second Coming producer Chris Hanley told Variety last week that his fellow producers and director Jonas Akerlund will be speaking at the Cannes Film Festival with Pussy Riot members Nadezhda "Nadya" Tolokonnikova and Maria "Masha" Alyokhina, who may find a place in the film.
Variety, however, stressed that Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina aren't confirmed to attend Cannes. The situation, it says, is "fluid."
It's yet another strange chapter in the lead-up to a film that doesn't need a sequel. James Franco isn't pleased that the next Spring Breakers involves neither him nor director Harmony Korine. On Instagram, Franco wrote "it will be a horrible film."
Bristling at criticisms of his yet-unfilmed film, Hanley told Variety, “Since there are some suggestions in the reporting on Second Coming that it is a 'weak' or 'lame' sequel, the new Irvine Welsh screenplay has the strongest feminine voice of the Spring Breakers characters so far. And Nadya and Maria of Pussy Riot are a powerful new voice of world feminism. We are all into radical innovations."
The producer doth protest too much, no? (Variety)