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Nicholas Hoult Eyes Fame And Fortune In First Trailer For Music Industry Drama Kill Your Friends

Max Joesph and Zac Efron may be tackling the glitz and glam of the EDM scene with We Are Your Friends later this month, but Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Black Mirror director Owen Harris is creating a decidedly darker take on the music industry and its sink-or-swim nature with his adaptation, Kill Your Friends.

Max Joesph and Zac Efron may be tackling the glitz and glam of the EDM scene with We Are Your Friends later this month, but Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Black Mirror director Owen Harris is creating a decidedly darker take on the music industry and its sink-or-swim nature with his adaptation, Kill Your Friends.

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Based on John Niven’s eponymous novel, the film charts the burgeoning status of the British music scene in the early ’90s – a time when Blur, The Stone Roses and Oasis all enjoyed remarkable success. Kill Your Friends orbits around Steven Stelfox’s (Nicholas Hoult) insatiable desire for fame and fortune, and today’s trailer merely hints at the measures he will go through to secure his place at the top of the proverbial food chain.

Harris’ interpretation of Niven’s jet-black source material looks to be as hysterical as it is satirical, and Hoult will be surrounded by Gavin & Stacey star and The Late Late Show host James Corden and Craig Roberts.

Owen Harris’ Kill Your Friends will make its debut at Toronto International Film Festival next month. To whet your appetite, here’s the official synopsis of John Niven’s novel of the same name.

When the road to success is littered with losers and even your closest colleagues are desperate for you to fail, what would you do to make it to the top? London, 1997; the British music industry is on a winning streak. Britpop bands Blur, Oasis, Radiohead rule the airwaves and Cool Britannia is in full swing. 27-year-old hit chasing A&R man Steven Stelfox (Nicholas Hoult) is slashing and burning his way through the music business, a world where ‘no one knows anything’ and where careers are made and broken by chance and the fickle tastes of the general public – “Yeah, those animals”.

Fueled by greed, ambition and inhuman quantities of drugs, Stelfox searches for his next hit record amid a relentless orgy of self-gratification. Created by an industry that demands success at any price, as the hits dry up and the industry begins to change, Stelfox takes the concept of ‘killer tunes’ to a murderous new level in a desperate attempt to salvage his career.