It's hard to believe that Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have been bored, but they have, and that's about to stop.
The duo have a bunch of stuff on the horizon, though, both for NIN and in general, which they discuss in a new GQ cover story, saying they're starting company called With Teeth, "built around storytelling in multiple disciplines: film production, fashion, a music festival, and a venture with Epic Games."
In GQ's words: "And then there was the company, which Reznor and Ross spent the last two years putting together, piece by piece, with the help of John Crawford, their longtime art director, and the producer Jonathan Pavesi. The idea was, what could they do that they hadn't already done around storytelling? Some of that might take the form of examining Nine Inch Nails from yet another angle – 'we've been working on homegrown IP around Nine Inch Nails, stories we could tell, and we're working on developing those in a way that are not what you think they'd be.' (As in: not a biopic.) They also have a show in development with Christopher Storer, the creator of The Bear, they said, and a film with the veteran horror director Mike Flanagan."
Also on the way, they say, are a short film with Susanne Deeken, a line of T-shirts (black, of course) with a to-be-announced designer, a record label, and a music festival (where, they told GQ, "we're going to debut as performing as composers along with a roster of other interesting people"). They've also been working with Epic Games for two years on "something that is not exactly a video game, in the UEFN ecosystem Epic has built around Fortnite."
Expanding on his plans for the company, Reznor told GQ, "Let's try some stuff. We're bored. We are. You know what I mean? We're grateful. We enjoy doing films. We can write a better Nine Inch Nails record, I think. We can put on a cooler tour. We are aimed to do that. But man, what if we try to do that [the company]? What if we could take what we're good at, like we did with film? We identified something I think we're good at and we figured out how to apply it to something else. What if we take that theory and try it on some other things? And that's led us into: we're not beaten down completely yet. And it feels exciting. That's what matters to us right now."
Reznor and Ross also discussed plans for a new Nine Inch Nails album, with the NIN founder telling GQ that doing soundtrack work had "managed to make Nine Inch Nails feel way more exciting than it had been in the past few years. I'd kind of let it atrophy a bit in my mind for a variety of reasons."
"I do feel excited about starting on the next record," Ross added to GQ. "I think we're in a place now where we kind of have an idea."
Read GQ's piece in full here.
This article was originally published on BrooklynVegan.com and has been edited by Revolver.
