Evan Rachel Wood has declined to give interviews about her allegations of abuse against Marilyn Manson, but will reveal all soon.
Wood’s story will be told in Phoenix Rising, a documentary set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 23rd.
Directed by Oscar-nominated Amy Berg (Janis: Little Girl Blue, Deliver Us From Evil), the documentary was filmed in two parts – only the first of which will be shown at Sundance.
It will air in full on HBO later this year.
Wood has spoken publicly about her experienced with domestic violence for several years, and in 2019 created the Phoenix Act, a bill that extends the statute of limitations on domestic violence from three years to five.
But it was only in February last year she named Manson as the perpetrator who “horrifically abused” her in an Instagram post.
“The name of my abuser is Brian Warner, known to the world as Marilyn Manson,” she wrote.
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Manson has denied all of the allegations, although they opened a floodgate of other accusers coming forward, including Manson’s former assistant and Game of Thrones actor Esmé Bianco.
Court documents have since surfaced alleging sick threats against Wood’s son.
His management, label and publicist all dropped him in the wake of the allegations.
As reported by Variety, Berg was initially approached for the project in 2019, but only agreed to take part when COVID shut things down in 2020.
At that time, nobody knew who Wood’s alleged abuser was.
“It wasn’t about Marilyn Manson, and his whole world, this was about an Erin Brockovich story,” Berg says.
“We were really focused on telling a story about empowerment, something that would offer resources for women and men who are stuck in abusive situations. And that was what we were making — until she decided to name him publicly.”
Berg says the documentary is “a really intimate portrait” of Wood, to whom she had “incredible access”.
HBO signed on to air the documentary the same month that Manson released his eleventh studio album, We Are Chaos.
It was then that Wood decided to name him, after years of veiled allegations, Variety reports.
Part 1 of Phoenix Rising ends there.
Part 2 – which Berg is still working on – will focus on the aftermath.
“Naming Manson obviously created a lot more story for us,” Berg says.
“It became a two-part film in the edit bay.”
