If you want, I'll show you: The Pot and the Prince will save the fairy—tale world from the Necromancer

Filming of the feature film "The King and the Fool. Forever" is nearing completion. The musical fantasy adventure will be released on February 19, 2026. The group visited the northernmost part of the Rybachy Peninsula, and built several large-scale fantasy sets in St. Petersburg. Izvestia visited one of them. What the upcoming film has in common with Pirates of the Caribbean, Game of Thrones and the melodrama A Star is Born with Lady Gaga, who the director made the main crash and what David Bowie has to do with it, is in our report from the set.

The Punk Paradise of the Pot

By the time the journalists were invited to St. Petersburg to watch the film "The King and the Fool. Forever", the team has already completed the stage of location filming on the Rybachy Peninsula in the Murmansk region, which has repeatedly become the "hero" of nature documentaries. The stunningly beautiful shots from the expedition to the north with the Potty, Prince and Princess familiar from the series in complex fantasy costumes warmed up the anticipation.

And now it's December, the industrial zone, a huge, unremarkable gray hangar. But it's only on the outside. Crossing the threshold, you find yourself in some kind of crazy parallel reality. "Make yourself at home, traveler," the door mat reassures with a line from the song "Forester." If he had suddenly spoken, it would have seemed logical in what was happening around Sura.

Through the haze and semi-darkness, you can see a long queue of monsters of all stripes lined up at the food truck for lunch. The troll and the dwarf are waiting for her, sitting on a bench next to the director's chair, and from time to time they lazily talk about something. Circus performers are walking past at this moment on high stilts. The members of the film crew in hipster hoodies, scurrying back and forth, return to reality. "Turn on the music," a female voice commands into the loudspeaker after a break, and the sated evil spirits burst into a roar of jubilant screams to the chorus: "A scream is like thunder — give people rum!"

The action of the future film takes place immediately after the events of the TV series of the same name, which was released on Kinopoisk in 2023. After his death, Gorshok lives in the world of songs of the "King and the Fool" — in the tavern, where he is forever the headliner. In reality, this is an impressive three-story arena, resembling a fortress. It was built in a hangar for several months.

— I took Shakespeare's Globe Theater as a basis, but we made the structure more antique, similar to the Colosseum. There was an old stone theater with an arena in the center, around which people are bragging. This is the punk paradise of the Pot," said conceptual artist Andrei Nazarov. — The world of the King and the Fool, it seems to me, is the epitome of intentionally inept eclecticism. We have brightly painted sofas with teeth, with "goats" (meaning a gesture. — Ed.), with eyes that are juxtaposed with medieval elements. Everything is appropriate here. This is such hooliganism.

There are frescoes on the walls based on drawings by the Prince and works by Bosch. There are massive statues of buffoons around the perimeter, one of them in pink leopard bikinis. The shops next door sell pastries in the shape of intimate body parts. In the Deadly doll brothel, the appropriate pleasures. For the mood, visitors to the pub are served a dubious kind of swill, like the green wine "Beaver Stream" (as it says on the label). The central point is a bar with a rooftop stage, where a Potty is like on Olympus. Rails were laid around the structure for filming musical numbers.

— The stage is spinning, and since the actors are standing on the very edge, you have to ride parallel on the cart, because you can't get up with the camera at that moment. Now we're going to shoot a long shot and pass the camera from hand to hand several times in the process. First, she will walk along the bottom for a long time, then a stuntman will pick her up, lift her to the second floor, another person will intercept her there, and at the end, another one from a crane, and the camera will fly onto the stage," the director of photography Stepan Beshkurov shows in front of the engine.

— When Stepan and I met, he gave me two films as references that I wanted to show him myself. One of them is "A Star is Born" with Lady Gaga. This is an example of how to film concerts," said Igor Gudkov, one of the film's producers and the band's former manager, who is known in music circles as a Punker.

In the center is the footage: actor Maxim Matveev will appear in the sequel to "Red Silk"

"Black Silk", "The King and the Fool. Forever" and other big premieres were presented at the Russian Film Business Forum

"There is no such amount of absurdity on any set"

The audience is punks who inhabit the world of scary tales of the King and the Fool. On this day, there were more than 200 actors of mass scenes on the set. In costumes, none of which is repeated, the mix of eras and styles is striking. Here, for example, there is a lone knight in a yellow uniform who hides his eyes under matching sunglasses, a pirate in a paint-stained raincoat and a cocked hat, a rocker in a leather jacket with spikes over a crinoline dress and a mohawk of toilet brushes on his head.

— We made mohawks for the characters from everything that came to our mind — from old musical instruments, lemonade cans, newspapers, screeds, construction ropes, doll legs, - said costume designer Olga Mikhailova. — The beautiful fashion designer Vivienne Westwood raised the punk aesthetic towards art, and I wanted to go the same way. If you look at women's corsets, many of them have copied paintings from the XV–XVI centuries — all kinds of bestiaries, monsters, animals.

The image of the Pot performed by Konstantin Plotnikov has not undergone any global external changes: a leather raincoat, the same trademark hairstyle-a hedgehog. The rest of the main four, getting into his shelter, acquire a new crazy look. The Prince now has long white hair with a red streak and a headband, like a member of the American glam metal band Mötley Crüe, who thundered in the early 1980s. There's something wild about the Princess (Vera Volt) from Harley Quinn. Maybe it's the green wig. And the Widow (Daria Melnikova) resembles a pirate.

"I look like Jack Sparrow's wife all of a sudden," the actress says. — A leather corset with patterns, a tailcoat with worn vintage inserts. This time, the costumes and wigs are very complicated. It's beautiful, but it's also difficult — you can't sit down or stand up in anything.

In the shot, the Widow is at the bar that day, pouring foam for the entire crowd. With one right hand, armed with an empty bottle, he knocks out a drunk who has brazenly stuck his mouth to the faucet. Many of the tricks are performed by the artists themselves.

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Izvestia's report from the set and the first trailer of the film give an idea of the characters of the fairy tale.

— On the first day of filming, I thought and even discussed with Kostya Plotnikov that there is no such amount of absurdity that is happening on any set. This is some kind of universe of our director Rustam Mosafir, who sees it that way. And he doesn't deny anything — it's even a problem. He responds to everything you suggest.: "Come on!" "What if I do a somersault?" He's like, "Yeah, super! Somersault!" It's scary! But this is an actor's happiness.

"Crashes in movies are a must have"

This motley company is united by the threat hanging over the country of eternal intoxication. The fairy—tale universe is being devoured by the dead, who were raised from their graves by the Necromancer, the hero of the song of the same name "The King and the Fool".

— This time we are not delving into biographies. This time it's a pure fairy tale, fantasy without brakes, absolute fiction. Our villain is Ilya Grishin, a debutant. This is not some ancient senile man or a Koshchey with a stick. This is a young, charismatic dude — one hundred percent crash for a female audience. Crashes in movies are a must have. There is something of the Gothic romantics in his image, and the spirit of the early David Bowie. And what he's going to sing is a mix of "The King and the Fool" with Bowie. Such a goth-punk icon from a dark fairy tale," says director Rustam Mosafir.

The Necromancer's world is another crazy thing that the filmmakers have done. The team flew to Altai in search of locations, but in the end, seeing a salt lake there, recreated it in the pavilion. It took 280 tons of water. Bare rocks rose up all around, bathed in a blood-red light.

— Misha Gorshenev would be 100% satisfied! Everyone recognizes this — the Prince, Misha's brother, and everyone from his entourage," Panker answers the question of whether Gorshok ever thought that a film would be made about him. — Most of all, he wanted "The King and the Fool" to be popular. It was his ultimate goal. We made this band heard again. He would have been involved in all of this. It is a pity that he did not star in Balabanov's film at the time. I remember him calling me.: "Balabanov came here, we got drunk. It was so cool!" They liked each other very much, but it didn't happen.

The film will include more than ten rock band songs. The composer of the project was Mikhail Gorshenev's younger brother Alexey. The creators promise unexpected moves, as in "Game of Thrones", a finale "with a powerful hook" and as if they invite you to the cinema in the language of the forester from the song "The King and the Fool": "Make yourself at home, the audience. I won't refuse anything." The release date of Plus Studio, Lunapark and NMG Kinoprokat was announced recently — the film will be released in cinemas on February 19, 2026.