‘The French Dispatch’: Here’s Everything You Need to Know about the upcoming Wes Anderson movie
Anderson continues his 2010’s tendency to tell stories about individuals who are anything but family, and this time it will take a step further to show the story of a journalist.
Wes Anderson seems to have taken a steep turn from animated pet creatures exiled at a garbage-dump to humans who in the most Wes Anderson-way are weird. His 2020 movie, ‘The French Dispatch’, is already creating quite the buzz with its star-studded cast and its inclination towards everything French. As his tenth movie, Anderson is returning to some of his all-time regulars with a few new faces who have already forged a pretty promising career in the industry for themselves.
As the film is set to premiere in 2020, and it can be expected that Anderson will once again bring out the ridiculously quirky side of humans, here’s everything that you need to know about ‘The French Dispatch’:
Release Date:
Anderson has been discreet about his upcoming project, hence, no particular release date for the movie has yet been confirmed. However, judging by its timeline, where production is supposed to wrap up this year, the movie might come out in 2020. Also considering the director has a thing for releasing movies in spring, chances are ‘The French Dispatch’ will hit the big-screen sometime next year, in March. However, that is not confirmed yet.
Plot:
In a single line, the story of ‘The French Dispatch’ is “a love letter to journalists set at an outpost of an American newspaper in 20th-century Paris.” However, Anderson continues to remain reticent, as he has claimed “The story is not easy to explain”. In an interview with IndieWire, the director explained, “[It’s about an] American journalist based in France [who] creates his magazine. It is more a portrait of this man, of this journalist who fights to write what he wants to write. It’s not a movie about freedom of the press, but when you talk about reporters you also talk about what’s going on in the real world.”
In that way, it can be said that Anderson’s upcoming movie might just be a reminiscent of his former dry comedy, ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’.
Cast:
As already said, this movie is practically reuniting Anderson with some of his all-time work buddies. Among them, we will get to see Bill Murray (‘Moonrise Kingdom’), Tilda Swinton (‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’), Frances McDormand (‘Moonrise Kingdom’), Saoirse Ronan (‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’), Owen Wilson(‘The Darjeeling Limited’), and Bob Balaban (‘Moonrise Kingdom’). The regulars will also be joined by newcomers to the Anderson universe such as Timothee Chalamet, Guillaume Gallienne, and Benicio del Toro.
Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman, and Owen Wilson in ‘The Darjeeling Limited’. (2007)(IMDb)
However, among all the actors perhaps it is Murray whose relation with Anderson is nothing less than a parable. Murray has been working with Anderson since his sophomore project, ‘Rushmore’, where the actor had apparently given up on $25,000 of his total earning from the movie in order to cover part of the film’s costing. As every pupil-master legend goes, Anderson has left that $25,000 cheque untouched till today. Similarly, Anderson shares a vital relationship with his one-time college-mate, Owen Wilson.
Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, and Edward Norton in ‘Moonrise Kingdom’. (2012) (IMDb)
Apparently, the two buddies had also staged a break-in at the apartment where they lived during their years in the University of Texas. During an interview with LA Weekly, Anderson had explained, “We ended up moving in the middle of the night, and [the landlord] hunted us down with a private investigator.” Although, actors like Murray, Wilson, and several others have been a regular with Anderson, let’s just say we are quite eager to watch the ‘Beautiful Boy’, Timothee Chalamet get on board. Chalamet came to the limelight in 2017 with two groundbreaking movies- Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Call Me By Your Name’ and Greta Gerwig’s ‘Lady Bird’. The former saw him become the third youngest actor to have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
The cast and crew of ‘The French Dispatch’. (IMDb)
Director:
‘The French Dispatch’ will be Wes Anderson’s tenth film, and the director will probably continue to enthrall his audience with his spiffing color palette that has been quite prominent in his former works such as ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ (which got him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director), ‘Hotel Chevalier’, ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, and ‘Isle of Dogs’ which was a little dim compared to the rest. However, with ‘The French Dispatch’ Anderson might just show us his ability to bundle up tragedy in an otherwise beautifully wrapped setting, which in this film’s case is (clearly) France.
However, what has always captivated Anderson’s audience are his characters. Anderson’s off-beat characterization, that can easily be missed for its immense eccentricity, forms the very base of his work, and we can easily imagine just what he might do with an onscreen reproduction of a character based on a journalist.
News: Elisabeth Moss comes onboard!
Anderson’s upcoming movie continues to remain starstruck as Elizabeth Moss is now on board to join the rest of the cast. The actress, who has been praised for her performance in Alex Ross Perry’s ‘Her Smell’, told Hollywood Reporter, “I just did a tiny part in a Wes Anderson film, and 100 percent of it was because I wanted to be in a Wes Anderson movie. I’m a tremendous fan. That’s why you get all those other actors in for small parts in his movies, because they just want to work with him. So, it’s much more about the collaboration than any calculated career move.”
Movies to watch before ‘The French Dispatch’:
It might be a good idea to revisit some of the Wes Anderson classics in order to remind ourselves just why we fell in love with his works in the first place. Nothing about a Wes Anderson movie is unbelievable yet everything is just as strange. His 2001 J.D.Salinger-esque movie, ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’, comes up with a regular story of youthful fame and adult boredom. However, Anderson does not tell a story, he shows it, and that is precisely why ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ was included in BBC’s 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century.
Similarly, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ inclined heavily upon the bond between siblings and their mother, and how that affects their relation with everyone else. This highly decisive film (it never takes place in Darjeeling) was just the perfect tale of banal characters on a knife-edged journey. ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, on the other hand, truly saw Anderson surpass his ingenuity. The film which followed a sensitive yet humorous hotel manager and his trusted lobby-boy, won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and garnered three more Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Director for Anderson.
‘The French Dispatch’ might release early on in 2020, or late in 2019. There is no official trailer of the movie yet.
