Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series, spotlighting the year’s most talked-about scripts, continues with Saltburn, the brutally dark satirical thriller written and directed by Emerald Fennell. The pic marks her sophomore feature, on the heels of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar winner Promising Young Woman.
Stylish and idiosyncratic, Saltburn engendered huge buzz in its Telluride world premiere before going on to hit theaters in November. The Amazon MGM Studios title, set in mid-2000s England, tells the story of Oliver (Barry Keoghan), an Oxford student who initially struggles to find his place at the university, before undertaking some cunning social climbing. After making his way into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), he’s invited to his eccentric and uber-wealthy family’s estate for a summer he’ll never forget.
Without entirely spoiling the viewing experience, Fennell revealed following a screening at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles in September that her intent with Saltburn was to create “a vampire film” centered on the theme of “the fetishization of beauty.” She elaborated on her vision at Deadline’s Contenders Film: London event, explaining that she wanted to make something “about desire and that very complicated relationship with the things that we really want, can’t have and will never have us back.”
Also starring Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Archie Madekwe, Alison Oliver and Carey Mulligan, Saltburn is produced by Fennell along with LuckyChap’s Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara, a trio who also this year put out the record-smashing Barbie.
Click below to read the Saltburn script.
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