Streep’s campus killer film to go ahead

The release of a new Meryl Streep movie about a campus killing spree, which was postponed last year after the shooting of 32 people at Virginia Tech, will not be delayed again – despite the recent spate of campus killings, including the gunning down of five students in a classroom at Northern Illinois University on St Valentine’s Day.

Dark Matter is based on the true story of Gang Lu, a Chinese graduate student at the University of Iowa who shot and killed five people and paralysed another before killing himself in 1991. In real life, Lu's rage was fueled by his belief that he should have received honours for his doctoral dissertation that were instead awarded to a fellow student.

The film, whch also stars Aidan Quinn and the young Chinese actor Liu Ye as the student-turned-killer, will open on April 11 – almost exactly a year since the Korean-American student Cho Seung-hui went on his rampage at Virginia Tech. "Obviously that was a long time ago. It's a good movie and we feel it should get out there," said Gary Rubin of First Independent Pictures, which is distributing the film.

Streep plays the mentor of the Iowa student who's working on a scientific theory about dark matter, which shapes most of the universe - a concept that has driven astro-physicists crazy for years. Dark Matter won the Alfred P Sloan award at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival for "its evocative portrayal of the scientific passions, career politics, and cultural conflicts in an astro-physics research laboratory".