Sleeping Beauty update gets an atmospheric trailer

The first trailer for Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty has arrived, and it looks considerably darker than the other fairytale-inspired movies heading our way.

Offering more in the way of evocative imagery and ominous mood-setting than cold hard plot details, the modern update of the story stars Emily Browning ( Sucker Punch ) as university student Lucy.

It appears she's sucked into a high-class prostitution ring, where she's drugged into sedation for her clients in a quite radical deviation from the original story.

The official synopsis describes the Australian movie as follows:

"A haunting erotic fairy tale about Lucy, a student who drifts into prostitution and finds her niche as a woman who sleeps, drugged, in a ‘Sleeping Beauty chamber’ while men do to her what she can‘t remember the next morning."

The script was previously on the Black List of the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood, and Alice in Wonderland star Mia Wasikowska was once attached to the lead role before she dropped out for Jane Eyre .

Sleeping Beauty also comes packing an impressive endorsement from filmmaker Jane Campion. Sample the trailer for yourself now:

Sleeping Beauty is set to be released later this year, and will screen at the Cannes Film Festival.

Matt Maytum is the former Editor of Total Film magazine. Over the past decade, Matt has worked in various roles for TF online and in print, including at GamesRadar+. Bucket-list-ticking career highlights have included reporting from the set of Tenet and Avengers: Infinity War, as well as covering Comic-Con, TIFF and the Sundance Film Festival.