Netflix's "Velvet Buzzsaw" is the latest movie from writer-director Dan Gilroy ("Nightcrawler").
The movie is a twisted look at art versus commerce that's part dark comedy, part B-horror movie.
But it's also personal for Gilroy, as it's a way he got over being the screenwriter for the doomed Tim Burton "Superman Lives" project, starring Nicolas Cage as the Man of Steel.
Gilroy talked to Business Insider about making a past failure into its own art.
"Art versus commerce" is a topic that has been explored for centuries in many forms, but leave it to the writer-director of "Nightcrawler" to put his own demented twist on it.
Dan Gilroy's "Velvet Buzzsaw" (available Friday on Netflix) is part B-movie slasher film, part commentary on the monetization of creativity, and like his two previous directing efforts ? "Nightcrawler" and "Roman J. Israel, Esq." ? it's also a personal story.
The movie is a gory, darkly comedic tale set in the art world that follows what happens when the paintings of a recently deceased unknown artist become a must-have for the art gallery elite. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a renowned critic and Rene Russo plays a prominent gallery owner. As the works sell for millions, the people responsible for making a profit from them begin to be killed by the art.
Gilroy wrote the movie to release his frustrations from the experience of being involved in the doomed Tim Burton "Superman Lives" movie. The scrapped attempt to make a Man of Steel movie in 1996 (the behind-the-scenes debacle was told in the 2015 documentary "The Death of 'Superman Lives:' What Happened?") is known best for the infamous costume test photos of Nicolas Cage dressed as Superman.