@Ari Aster
Acclaimed genre filmmaker Ari Aster has revealed that his next movie will be a contemporary Western. The feature, which is titled Eddington, will be set in a fictional cooper mining town in New Mexico during the pandemic, according to Italian outlet La Republica (via World of Reel).
The three-time Gotham Award-nominated filmmaker most recently wrote, directed and produced the surrealist horror tragicomedy, Beau Is Afraid. The movie was released in theaters in April by A24.
Aster’s frequent collaborator, cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski, spoke about Eddington while promoting Beau Is Afraid at the time of its distribution during a seminar at the Belcourt theatre in Nashville. Pogorzelski, who was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Midsommar, mentioned that his upcoming project with Aster would begin filming this summer
Beau Is Afraid features an ensemble cast, led by Joaquin Phoenix, as well as such performers as Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Parker Posey, Michael Gandolfini, Zoe Lister-Jones and Richard Kind. The movie followed Phoenix’s titular character, Beau Wasserman, as he embarks on a journey home to see his mother.
Before releasing Beau Is Afraid, Aster scribed and helmed the acclaimed 2018 supernatural horror film, Hereditary, which starred Toni Collette in an acclaimed performance. He then went on to pen and direct the folk horror movie Midsommar with Florence Pugh, which was released the year after his debut feature.
Aster revealed during a Reddit AMA he participated in while promoting Hereditary, which was also distributed in theaters by A24, that “There was a period of time when I thought Midsommar would be the debut feature. There was a period when I thought another script called Eddington might be the first movie.
“For like five years, I was trying to get that Western-noir dark ensemble comedy going. That won’t be the next one, by the way, though I do still want to make it very badly. I made Hereditary first, but I always had Midsommar in my back pocket, like it was right there in me,” the filmmaker continued.
“Although I don’t know if you’d call it a revisionist western. It’s contemporary; one foot is in the western and one foot is even more heavily in the noir genre. So it’s like a film noir ensemble western dark comedy,” Aster added.
Eddington doesn’t currently have a release date, but it’s believed that A24 will once again work with the filmmaker to distribute his latest project. Aster’s interview with La Republica comes after he told The New York Times last month that his next movie would “almost certainly” be the western.