Who is in Wes Anderson’s new film? More like, who isn’t?
The trailer is officially here for Wes Anderson’s latest film, and according to our preliminary calculations, it appears to boast more stars than (*checks notes*) the night sky.
Timothée Chalamet, Saoirse Ronan, Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Elisabeth Moss and Tilda Swinton are just a few of the A-listers the auteur has assembled for “The French Dispatch,” his 10th feature.
Liev Schreiber, Ed Norton, Willem Dafoe, Christoph Waltz and Owen Wilson also made Anderson’s stacked lineup, which was unveiled in Wednesday’s debut trailer.
Loosely based on the New Yorker, the highly anticipated follow-up to 2014’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and 2018’s “Isle of Dogs” centers on the many staffers hard at work at an American magazine. Murray’s Arthur Howitzer Jr. stands at the helm of the publication, whose stories build out the anthology-style plot.
“It began as a holiday,” a voice narrates at the top of the trailer. “Eager to escape a bright future on the Great Plains, Arthur Howitzer Jr. transformed the series of travelogue columns into the French Dispatch, a factual, weekly report on the subjects of world politics, the arts — high and low — and diver’s stories of human interest.”
Oh, you thought we were done? Also featured in the newly rebranded Searchlight Pictures’ “love letter to journalists” are Frances McDormand, Léa Seydoux, Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Rupert Friend, Cécile de France and Fisher Stevens. The crowded ensemble is a mixture of some of the director’s recurring muses (Wilson, Norton, Swinton, Dafoe, Murray, etc.), and other luminaries (Chalamet, Del Toro, Moss, etc.) set to make their Anderson debuts.
Notably missing from the filmmaker’s star-studded roundup, however, are several equally prominent actors of color — in line with Anderson’s history of mostly white casts.
Also included in the cast are relative industry newcomers Lyna Khoudri and Alex Lawther. In true Anderson fashion, the remainder of the trailer is a colorful, noticeably symmetrical montage of dramatic, direct-to-camera stares and light-speed, deadpan dialogue.
“The French Dispatch,” also starring Henry Winkler, Bob Balaban, Lois Smith, Griffin Dunne, Tony Revolori, Mathieu Amalric and Steve Park, hits theaters July 24.
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