Todd Haynes and Joaquin Phoenix To Collaborate on 1930s-era Gay Love Story

The latest news from Cannes is that Todd Haynes and Joaquin Phoenix are set to collaborate on a gay love story set in Los Angeles of the 1930s.

As the acclaimed indie filmmaker told Eric Kohn of IndieWire this week: “I have more features planned. I have also episodic projects coming that are planned, that are really exciting. I’m going back to work with Kate Winslet with something she brought me for HBO. The next film is a feature that’s an original script that I developed with Joaquin Phoenix based on some thoughts and ideas he brought to me. We basically wrote with him as a story writer. Me and Jon Raymond and Joaquin share the story credit. And we hope to be shooting it beginning early next year.”

The upcoming film, added Haynes, will be rated NC-17, thanks to Phoenix’s urging. Haynes already has several queer films under his belt, including Carol, Poison, Far From Heaven, and Velvet Goldmine. When Carol premiered at Cannes in 2015, it received a 10-minute standing ovation. Co-star Rooney Mara won the prize for Best Actress, tying with My King’s Emmanuelle Bercot.

Haynes made his feature-film debut in 1991 with Poison, which was based on the writings of French iconic gay writer Jean Genet. The film was a triptych of queer-themed, transgressive narratives that presented homosexuality as a subversion of bourgeois heterosexual norms. Poison culminated with a dramatic scene in which two male prisoners were united in a wedding ceremony long before same-sex marriage was legalized in most of the world.

Joaquin Phoenix, the brother of actor River Phoenix, won several Oscar nominations for Best Actor and finally won the statuette for his role as Arthur Fleck in Joker. He will star in a sequel to Joker in 2024, appearing with Lady Gaga. Phoenix is also appearing in the title role of Napoleon, a film directed by Ridley Scott.

At this year’s Cannes festival, cinemagoers will be treated to Haynes’s May December film, which stars Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and Charles Melton.

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