Jane Schoenbrun Says A24 Passed On ‘Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma’ & HBO Nearly Greenlit ‘Public Access Afterworld’

There’s no shortage of enthusiasm and momentum surrounding Jane Schoenbrun right now. “I Saw the TV Glow” earned the filmmaker some of the strongest reviews of 2024, Martin Scorsese singled it out for praise, and their follow-up, “Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma,” arrives this week after winning the Queer Palm at Cannes. But critical acclaim apparently hasn’t made getting Schoenbrun’s projects financed much easier.

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In a new Vulture profile, Schoenbrun revealed that A24, which released “I Saw the TV Glow,” passed on “Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma.” There was even a point when the filmmaker considered mounting a significantly scaled-back version independently before Mubi stepped in to finance the movie. Even then, Schoenbrun received a $10 million budget—the same amount they had to make “I Saw the TV Glow”—despite “Camp Miasma” being a larger production with stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson.

“I sometimes feel like the only trans person in America getting money from film financiers to make work,” Schoenbrun said.

The filmmaker also questioned whether Hollywood finds stories centered around trans suffering easier to finance than ones about liberation. “Camp Miasma,” unlike the alienation and dysphoria running through Schoenbrun’s previous films, is deliberately more playful, sexual, funny, and exuberant—even if there’s still plenty of blood involved.

That friction between personal filmmaking and the machinery required to finance it has become increasingly apparent to Schoenbrun.

“I’m working in these mediums that are clearly indebted to commercial power structures,” they explained. “And the more I do it, the more I’m like, That’s the core tension. I love television. I love American movies. And I also want to destroy them. I see them as prisons as much as they’re spaces of emancipation.”

And “Camp Miasma” wasn’t Schoenbrun’s only recent near-miss with Hollywood.

Around the same time, the filmmaker was developing “Public Access Afterworld,” an original television series described as a decade-spanning epic involving cults, content moderation, and human sacrifice. According to Schoenbrun, the project came “tantalizingly close” to receiving a greenlight at HBO.

Other potential buyers rejected it for supposedly “skewing too young,” terminology Schoenbrun interpreted rather less diplomatically as a euphemism for the project containing too much “fag shit.”

Rather than abandon the idea, Schoenbrun transformed “Public Access Afterworld” into a novel, due in October from Hogarth Books. It is now planned as the first installment of a trilogy, and the filmmaker still hopes it might eventually make its way to the screen. The larger project expands upon many of Schoenbrun’s recurring concerns about television, identity, online culture, and the systems people find themselves trapped inside.

“I’m finding ways to speak politically that feel coherent about not just personal journeys of transition but the ways in which this world is limiting and breaking,” Schoenbrun said.

Schoenbrun isn’t leaving television behind, however. Their next screen project is Netflix’s adaptation of Charles Burns’ graphic novel series “Black Hole,” about teenagers who contract a sexually transmitted infection that causes bizarre physical mutations.

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And there’s a significant update there, too: Schoenbrun plans to write the entire season themselves and has already completed the first two episodes. “My biggest fear is that I end up making something that I’m not proud of,” Schoenbrun said.

“Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma” opens in New York and Los Angeles on August 7 before expanding wide on August 21.