Charli XCX Reportedly Joining Scorsese Horror Film

By Tom Whitfield

Variety reports that Charli XCX will cameo in Martin Scorsese’s horror adaptation of Peter Cameron’s What Happens at Night, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.

Variety’s reported cast also includes:

• Mads Mikkelsen
• Patricia Clarkson
• Jared Harris

The outlet attributes its casting information to sources and says little else about the project. The report gives no release date, filming schedule, character, screen time or direct confirmation from the named participants.

Rolling Stone describes the film as placing a married American couple in a remote European town where they hope to adopt a baby. They confront peculiar hotel guests while struggling with the adoption and their own unease.

Rolling Stone received no immediate response to requests for comment from representatives for Charli XCX, Scorsese, Apple and StudioCanal.

What does the reported cameo change for Charli XCX?

Rolling Stone notes that Charli previously worked with Scorsese on the cover of her Music, Fashion, Film album, released in July. The black-and-white image showed three figures, one from each category: John Cale for music, Marc Jacobs for fashion and Scorsese for film. They sat together in a kitchen.

“She said she had an idea to run by me,” Cale told Rolling Stone in an exclusive interview. “There was talk of a video, an ode to an imprint of time and place. Next thing, I was on a flight. Ended up in a random kitchen.”

That history makes a second Scorsese collaboration plausible, but it does not verify the Variety report. A shared album cover establishes a prior project, not a film contract.

The reported part would turn that album-cover collaboration into a film credit and place Charli with five other actors named by Variety. It would also extend a recent run of screen work.

Rolling Stone lists that run as follows. She recently starred in:

• Pete Oh’s Erupjca
• The Brat mockumentary The Moment

She has also appeared in:

• Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights of Hero
• Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex
• Cathy Yan’s The Gallerist
• A yet-untitled Takashi Miike movie

Those credits show breadth, but they do not establish the scale of the Scorsese project. Neither the album-cover image nor the recent credits reveal whether Charli’s reported part is a cameo in the strict sense or a larger role.

The practical change would be a move from a photographic collaboration with Scorsese into an unnamed film role. That possibility remains unverified. Variety relies on unnamed sources, the representatives did not immediately respond, and the report gives no character, schedule or release date.

Rolling Stone says Charli is nearing the conclusion of her U.S. tour in support of Music, Fashion, Film. It says she will wrap the North American leg of the trek on Friday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. The film report supplies no production timetable against which to measure that date.

The Friday concert supplies the report’s one fixed point in the near-term schedule. If the cameo is confirmed, the album-cover partnership will become a narrative film credit; until then, its scale and timing remain open.