Entertainment Weekly has shared their Summer Preview, and along with this we’ve gotten more updates on A24’s upcoming film, MaXXXine, starring Mia Goth. We learn more details about the film as well as a new cast member, Yellowjackets and The Boogeyman‘s Sophie Thatcher!

Speaking with writer/director Ti West, West explains how film deals with what “…it’s like making movies — or what people think Hollywood is versus what it is actually — is a big part of what’s happening in the movie.” We also learn that the film will be “very gruesome” and that “the threat shows up in an unexpected way.”

In the film, “When audiences pick up with Maxine (Goth), she’s in Tinseltown in 1985, six years after she escaped the farm in X. She has reached the top of the adult film industry, but she’s plateaued and looking to break into “real movies.” Maxine finally gets her big break from Elizabeth Bender (The Crown Emmy nominee Elizabeth Debicki), a noted filmmaker who made an indie horror hit called The Puritan. The sequel, The Puritan II, is now being made as a big studio project, and Bender decides to take a chance by stunt casting a porn actress, Maxine, in a lead role opposite another actress (played by Lily Collins of Emily in Paris).

Forces surrounding Maxine threaten to shatter her dreams of stardom. Kevin Bacon, a longtime admirer of West’s work, arrives in the film as a private investigator hired by someone pretty powerful to track her down. The film is also set against the backdrop of Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. the serial killer known as the Night Stalker who was active in California from 1984-’85. Michelle Monaghan and Bobby Cannavale play police detectives pursuing the Night Stalker, and they set their sights on Maxine when multiple women in her orbit show up dead.”

Speaking of the film’s ensemble cast, which also includes Giancarlo Esposito (Better Call Saul, Abigail), Moses Sumney (The Idol), Halsey, Michelle Monaghan (Nanny), and Bobby Cannavale (The Watcher), West had this to say, “To try to do a big, sprawling Los Angeles ensemble movie is what the movie was, and that’s just a big undertaking.” If X channeled slasher classics such as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Pearl channeled old-school Hollywood musicals, MaXXXine invokes what West describes as a genre of Los Angeles movies, as evidenced by the St. Elmo’s Fire movie theater marquee and the Bates Motel set that pop up in the trailer. He also adds, “There’s a kind of noir-ish mystery vibe to the movie that’s very fun.”

West also confirms the conclusion of the story, saying it, “will probably be the end of the Maxine era.” However, there is the possibility that other aspects of the story could be explored in future films.

MaXXXine releases in theaters July 5.