Hot Japanese director Sion Sono is set to make his English-language debut with Lords Of Chaos, about Norway’s black metal music scene, which has Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone lined up to star.

Based on Michael Moynihan and Didrik Soderlind’s book of the same name, the film depicts true events and revolves around the black metal sub-culture that spawned a wave of murders and Church arsons across Norway in the early 1990s.

Rathbone will play the lead role of The Count, often referred to as Norway’s Charles Manson, who brutally stabbed a black metal musician to death in 1993.

Stuart Pollok of LA-based Saltire Entertainment, Ko Mori of Eleven Arts and Oh Jungwan of Korea’s Bom Productions are producing the film, which starts shooting in Norway in mid-September.

Rathbone plays Jasper in Summit’s Twilight series and is currently shooting the lead role in M. Night Shyamalan’s $140m (€103m) The Last Airbender for Paramount Pictures.

Sono has a growing fanbase overseas thanks to films such as Suicide Club, Exte: Hair Extensions and most recently Love Exposure which won FIPRESCI and Caligari prizes in Berlin this year.

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