A fresh take on the high school dark comedy is set to take over Netflix this autumn, when the school year begins once more. In the coming-of-age film Do Revenge, Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke and Riverdale’s Camila Mendes will be taking over their high school and retaliating against those who wronged them. With Elle, director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson explains the motivation for her second feature film and discusses the themes, costumes and cast of their great heavyweight cast. Eleanor (Hawke), a newcomer to the Miami high school, and Drea (Mendes), the queen bee, form a surprising alliance in Do Revenge, a dark comedy about retribution.
It’s no secret that Drea’s “golden boy” lover Max, played by Euphoria’s Austin Abrams, leaked a sexually explicit recording of Drea to the school, and a girl started a cruel rumour about Eleanor that effectively outed her to the whole school. After a chance encounter, the girls create a plan to punish each other’s offenders when they meet again. Nobody in the film is a black-and-white villain or hero, in an effort to “…create something that paints with all the hues of adolescence” Do Revenge, according to the film’s director, would leave the viewer unable to support or oppose a character, and they’ll wonder what it means to be a “bad person”.
Do Revenge, Netflix’s new original series, has published first-look images to pique interest. Previously unseen photographs show Mendes and Hawke getting closer in their plots while dressed to kill in some of Morshead’s work. “Unapologetically pop-y” is how co-writer and director Robinson describes the aesthetic of Do Vengeance, which she and producer Peter Cron “…backwards-engineered this plot of revenge off of: What would it be like to take the joyful, thriller stakes of a Hitchcock movie and put it in high school?” While the film is likely to be lighthearted and amusing in the same way that Robinson’s past works have been, it will also address more serious issues like bullying and personal responsibility. cryptically states, “Whatever you believe this movie is, it’s that… but it’s also different,” implying that not everything is as it seems in the film.
It’s not really about cancelling culture, but accountability versus the way that we tear people down without the appropriate information, and the way that we boost people up without the correct information possibly. There is also the issue of trauma and how we handle it on the other hand. It’s important to think about how and why things happen before we can figure out what to do about it. With a nod to John Hughes and the style of the late ’90s, Drea and Eleanor’s clothes will play an equally important role in the film’s plot. From head-to-toe, Miami natives will be decked up in sequins, pastel hues, and ruffled feathers, reminiscent of high school films like The Heathers and Clueless. Trying to “…create an aesthetic that seems nostalgic but also doesn’t exist…” The majority of the clothing was custom-made by Morshead in order to give a traditional style a fresh look.
Young breakout performers like Euphoria’s Abrams fill the cast, which also has some of the best costume designs in the business. “We joke that they are like, the young Hollywood Avengers,” Robinson remarked after co-writing the most recent Phase 4 film of the MCU with director Taika Waititi, Thor: Love and Thunder. It’s a great name for a band, “The Revengers,” they tell us. More than current Hollywood aristocracy, she says, these well-known actors are all incredibly gifted and were born to play these Do Revenge roles. To accommodate Hawke’s other Netflix position on Stranger Things, the team was so confident in the chosen cast members that six weeks before to filming, they moved production from L.A. to Atlanta to accommodate their confidence in them. Despite the fact that co-writers Celeste Ballard (Space Jam: A New Legacy) and Robinson developed the script with no one in mind, the auditions demonstrated that the picture belonged to these two stars.
Do Revenge is Robinson’s hope for the audience: To put it another way: “We want you to have a blast. Exactly that is what it is. There should be no confusion. We’re not attempting to bring about global harmony. In this case, I’m not making a big political statement. You can’t help but enjoy this enjoyable film, which also happens to have a stellar cast of professional actors and actresses. His first feature picture since 2019’s Netflix movie “Someone Great,” Do Revenge is filmmaker Robinson’s second feature-length work.
Executive produced by Matt Levin and Joshua Bachove, and produced by Robinson, Cron, Anthony Bregman are the producers. Sophie Turner, Rish Shah who portrays Kamran in Ms Marvel, Outer Banks’ Jonathan Daviss as Elliott, Alisha Boe (13 Reasons Why) as Drea’s “try-hard woke ally” best friend Tara, Paris Berelc, Talia Ryder (West Side Story) as Gabbi, Eliza Bennett (The Notebook) as Jessica, and more. Netflix will release Do Revenge for viewing on September 16th.