EXCLUSIVE: Josh O’Connor will star in director Joel Coen’s new film Jack of Spades, which will shoot this summer on location in Scotland, we can reveal.
Details about Jack of Spades are sparse, but the movie continues British-born O’Connor’s phase of working with American directors. He’s recently been in New York shooting Steven Spielberg’s Untitled Amblin Universal Event Film.
Later Friday, O’Connor will ascend the Cannes Film Festival’s red-carpeted steps for the world premiere of Kelly Reichardt’s art heist movie The Mastermind. The actor was allowed time away from filming Spielberg’s sci-fi movie, which stars Emily Blunt, Colman Domingo and Eve Hewson.
O’Connor also features in Wake Up Dead Man for Rian Johnson, the latest Benoit Blanchett tale starring Daniel Craig, and his other picture with an American director at the helm is Max Walker-Silverman’s Rebuilding, which played at Sundance back in January.
Joel Coen and Frances McDormand
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O’Connor’s name has been referenced a lot in Cannes festival’s second week. He appears alongside Paul Mescal in Oliver Hermanus film The History of Sound, based on a novella by Ben Shattuck, who adapted his story for the screen. However, O’Connor wasn’t able to get away from Spielberg’s set to be on the Croisette to support Hermanus and Mescal.
In an interview for Deadline’s Disruptors Cannes Film Festival Magazine, O’Connor notes that that he shot all his scenes for The History of Sound in two weeks and that the lion’s share of the movie belongs to Mescal, who also produced it.
But O’Connor’s the main man in The Mastermind, Reichardt’s movie about a bumbling art thief.
Josh O’Connor in ‘The Mastermind’
2025 Mastermind Movie Inc
During the Deadline Disruptors interview, O’Connor teased that after completing his work on Spielberg’s film he would take a short break to tend his garden in England and then work on another film this summer. I kept on pushing and he finally gave up that the production would film “somewhere in Europe” and that it would be made by “ a pretty famous American” director.
He refused to divulge further details but, a key, reliable source confirmed Joel Coen’s name and further investigation revealed the location and title of the film.
Offers have also been made to two British actresses who happen to enjoy great success on both stage and screen to star with O’Connor, but I’m not able to confirm their names here.
Joel Coen’s last solo feature as director was The Tragedy of Macbeth with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the power-hungry Scottish couple. Maybe Macbeth gave him the idea to film Jack of Spades in Scotland?
In a coincidence of sorts, Joel’s brother, Ethan Coen, premieres his new film, Honey Don’t!, out of competition in the Grand Théâtre Lumière at midnight.
Together, the Coen brothers made a string of classic American movies including No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, Barton Fink, Miller’s Crossing and Raising Arizona.
Content shared from deadline.com.