PARK CITY, Utah — Here’s the twelve months Charli XCX is able to let “brat” die.
The British pop superstar, whose sixth studio album became a cultural and commercial phenomenon synonymous with an angle of spiky independence in 2024, is transferring on to a original ardour: movie. And he or she has unofficially launched her original chapter here on the Sundance Movie Competition with “The 2nd.”
The A24 movie, directed by Aidan Zamiri and co-written by Zamiri and Bertie Brandes, is a satire about Charli’s existence on the tip of her reputation, on the cease of “brat summer season” in 2024 as she used to be getting prepared to embark on her first arena tour.
The movie, which is able to begin in theaters Jan. 30, stars Charli as herself, Alexander Skarsgård as a pompous director searching for to steal over her tour and Rosanna Arquette as a steely memoir impress head, and it involves cameos from stars like Kylie Jenner, Julia Fox and Rachel Sennott.
“Appropriate now, in inequity to the me in the movie, I’m kind of like undoubtedly looking out ‘brat’ to cease and essentially pivot, like as a ways-off as that you just may well presumably presumably factor in,” Charli acknowledged from the stage of Sundance’s 2,500-seat Eccles Theatre. “And that’s now now not because I don’t like it. It’s correct because I mediate for all of us as artists, that you just must worry your self and … utterly switch the ingenious soup that you just’re in and hasten and live in a obvious bowl for some time and feel enriched by that.”
Charli is neatly coming into original ingenious territory in 2026. As well to “The 2nd,” she has appearing roles in two varied movies at Sundance, Gregg Araki’s “I Desire Your Sex,” in which she performs a personality who fakes an orgasm with Cooper Hoffman, and an art world satire known as “The Gallerist” with Natalie Portman and Zach Galifianakis, which premieres Saturday night. “They call it XCX Dance I hear,” Zamiri joked onstage when festival director Eugene Hernandez mentioned Charli’s various slate. She additionally wrote the soundtrack for the original Warner Bros. movie “Wuthering Heights,” starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, which opens Feb. 13. “The 2nd,” nonetheless, is the project that showcases Charli front and heart. The artist beforehand described a brat as someone who likes to celebration, “says some dreary issues infrequently” and is “simply, blunt and a little bit of bit unstable.” After the liberate of “brat,” the album became an gentle, with its signature green coloration and typeface turning up in memes and even in messaging from the Kamala Harris campaign. In the movie, the as soon as-underground club artist is considered feeling disoriented by her original mainstream success and barraged by those that wish to capitalize on it in questionable ways. She gets every kind of advice, including from Jenner, who suggests, “The 2d you have faith persons are getting sick of you, that’s whenever you happen to hope to head even tougher.” “I mediate I’m, as an artist, somewhat a unstable particular person,” Charli acknowledged onstage after the premiere. “And good, although. I’m somewhat good too … correct? But having been in the song alternate since I used to be 16, it’s like I’ve passed by varied varied phases in my career the assign I’ve felt on top of the realm or felt like absolute s—. … For me, I’ve had numerous apply reacting to all of those varied characters in my precise existence, so I mediate I used to be drawing from that in fact.” The filmmakers acknowledged an inspiration for the movie’s tone used to be the late Rob Reiner’s 1984 mockumentary “This Is Spinal Faucet.” Still, if Charli is able to cease the “brat” chapter, her followers may well very neatly be tougher to convince. Mark holders and festival volunteers lined up exterior the theater in the snow on Friday night sporting lime-green beanies — a promotional merchandise from the movie — and conserving copies of the album. “I feel like she has been huge for some time, but now now not as standard as she deserves,” acknowledged Hibba Ahmed, 21, from Salt Lake City. “I adore her self assurance. … The logo that she’s built persons are so without bid ready to acknowledge and establish with,” acknowledged Gabrielle Held, 23, a producing assistant from Atlanta. “It can in all probability perhaps presumably also additionally be interpreted in so many varied ways, and each person can ride it for various reasons.” When asked whether or not they are prepared to command goodbye to “brat,” some followers in line acknowledged they are on board for whatever Charli’s evolution may well involve. “She acknowledged she desires to bag into movie. She wrote plenty about it in her Substack,” acknowledged Emma Roth-Wells, 23, who lives in Salt Lake City, adding that it’s “thrilling.” “I make hope she additionally continues her song.” At the movie’s after-celebration, police on horseback forcefully pushed people away from the crowded door on the Premiere lounge on Predominant Avenue, the assign partygoers on the checklist got brat-green wristbands to enter. Inner, as a DJ spun Rihanna, the Verve and, yes, Charli XCX, bartenders served cocktails in Poppi soda cans branded with “The 2nd.” Among the many attendees were stars from Charli’s varied movie that premiered that night, “I Desire Your Sex,” including Hoffman and Scoot Sui Wonders, as neatly as native huge name John Barlow, the husband of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’s” Lisa Barlow, the self-anointed queen of Sundance. Charli’s moment at Sundance continues on Saturday, the assign audiences will bag their first see at “The Gallerist.” She is attending the festival in a in particular well-known twelve months, its closing in Park City earlier than transferring to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027 and its first for the rationale that death of its founder, Robert Redford. Though Charli may well presumably appear ubiquitous in Park City this twelve months, now now not each person at Sundance, an match that attracts cinephiles from all corners of custom, used to consider of her. In a line for a panel on environmental movies Friday afternoon, one attendee mentioned that night’s upcoming “The 2nd” premiere to his company. “Who’s Charli XCX?” one excellent friend asked. “Remember ‘brat summer season’?” he acknowledged. “Vaguely,” she answered. No now now not up to in that Sundance line, with regards to transferring on from brat, Charli may well already be getting her desire.
Rebecca Keegan is the senior Hollywood reporter for NBC Files Digital, the assign she covers the leisure alternate.