Kristen Stewart’s Lesbian Bodybuilder Movie “Love Lies Bleeding” Releases First Look, Will Debut at Sundance

Kristen Stewart’s hotly anticipated (by us) A24 movie Love Lies Bleeding has released a first look image. Kristen Stewart plays the love interest of a lesbian bodybuilder (played by queer actor Katy M. O’Brian, an actor who also does stunt work and is swole year-round). Co-written by Rose Glass and Weronika Tofilska, and directed by Glass, Love Lies Bleeding was shot last summer and screened this past spring in New York City. According to World of Reel, the audience had intense reactions to the movie at the spring screening:

Test screened in NYC tonight. Audience was having visceral reactions to the gore, blood and puking throughout. Has a strange ending that will make this a love it or hate it type movie. “Pain & Gain” for indie lesbians. Ed Harris is great and Katy O’Brian as well.

World of Reel also wrote that the film is “said to be about an aspiring bisexual bodybuilder in the late 1980s who moves to a small rural Nevada town from Oklahoma and falls madly in love with Kristen Stewart’s character who works at the local gym.” Kristen Stewart’s character is the daughter of the bodybuilder’s new boss, and she introduces the bodybuilder to the world of steroids! According to IMDB, Jenna Malone is also involved in this film somehow and it is about “A romance fueled by ego, desire and the American Dream.”

Katy O’Brian’s wife, Kylie, posted the first look images on her own instagram feed and described the grueling process Katy went through filming the movies, which included 12-16 hour days followed by three hours of lifting/cardio every night, and getting surgery for a Chrons scar just before reshoots. She gushed:

She absolutely devours this role, it is breathtaking. It is the performance of her life. The first day I arrived in New Mexico, she showed me something she was working on for a scene and I broke down crying it was so beautiful.

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There’s no set date for release, but it will make its world premiere at Sundance 2024.

Other Queer Pop Culture Stories For Your Day:

+ Netflix released a bunch of its viewing data from January – June 2023, but honestly it’s difficult to draw any real conclusions about cancelled gay content from it without seeing monthly or comparative data — like we’d have to see the numbers for First Kill’s first six months of life to have a genuine grip on its performance. Glamorous, which was very gay and pretty bad, logged 36.6 million hours of viewing, thus earning it the 490th spot on this list of 17k shows, but it was released eight days before the report’s data is cut off, so hard to know how it fared going forward. Regardless, it was cancelled.

Hours of watching, as a metric, obviously favors television over films. That said, I am truly sorry that so many people watched the Jonah Hill / Lauren London comedy You People (I am one of those people) (it has a small lesbian character) —  You People comes in at #35, with 181.8 million logged hours. Another Netflix original with a minor lesbian character, Your Place or Mine, is at #43 with 163 million hours.

Most of the queer-inclusive shows released during this time period have great numbers: XO Kitty (released mid-May), Ginny & Georgia, BEEF, Shadow & Bone,The Diplomat, Never Have I Ever, Welcome to Eden, Perfect Match, etc. However, Welcome to Eden has been cancelled, so!

+ TOMMY DORFMAN IS DIRECTING THE ADAPTATION OF MARIKO TAMAKI’S GRAPHIC NOVEL LAURA DEAN KEEPS BREAKING UP WITH ME

+ Romy’s “She’s On My Mind” music video is queer as fuck and stars Maisie Williams.

+ The Critic’s Choice Awards Nominees were announced today — Bottoms was nominated for Best Comedy, and Nimona for Best Animated Film! As in the Golden Globes, Anatomy of a Fall is up for Best Foreign Film and Jodie Foster for Nyad.

+ Sophia Bush discussed her divorce from Grant Hughes on a podcast, and also was at Art Basel with Ashlyn Harris last week.

+ Bella Ramsey creating ‘scary’ film they’ve been writing since the age of 14: Ramsay has been working on a feature film centered on mental health, specifically a girl with an eating disorder. They say the story is done in “an interesting, slightly spooky way.”

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