Stand By (Me): River Phoenix returning to the screen

Eighteen years after the death of River Phoenix, Dutch director George Sluizer has announced that he will finish Dark Blood, the 1993 film that Phoenix was shooting when he died of a heart attack outside the Viper Room in Los Angeles on Halloween night, aged 23.

After Phoenix’s death, Sluizer took the Dark Blood footage and kept it hidden, fearing - he says - that it would be destroyed. The director now plans to ask Phoenix’s brother Joaquim to supply voiceovers needed for a final cut of Dark Blood that may be ready for release next year.

“The voices of both brothers are very much alike,” the director, who has stayed in touch with the Phoenix family, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In Dark Blood, Phoenix plays a hermit living in the desert on a nuclear testing site as he waits for the end of the world. When a Hollywood jet-set couple (played by Judy Davis and Jonathan Pryce) arrives to find shelter, he begins a troubled relationship with the wife.