At this point in his career, you either love Wes Anderson or you don’t. The latter group includes those who once loved the writer-director, but grew tired of the….let’s go with “familiarity”….of his movies. All of his films all very Wes Anderson-y. If you are among his former admirers, we doubt the first trailer for his new film The Phoenician Scheme is going to bring you back into the fold. But if you still love Wes Anderson, this promo is everything you’d want from one of his movies. And even then, it has something every movie lover would want: an absurd leading performance by Benicio del Toro.
Benicio del Toro is Zsa-zsa Korda, “one of the richest men in Europe,” in Anderson’s new film. What exactly is going on in this sea of absurdity, though? The entire logline from Focus Features is simply, “The story of a family and a family business.” This trailer reveals the story is slightly more complicated than that. There’s plenty of danger (silly danger), romance (silly romance), and global intrigue (sill….you get the point). This is the kind of stylized, surrealist humor of Wes Anderson that makes him a genre unto himself.
The film also stars Mia Threapleton as nun Liesl, Korda’s daughter. Michael Cera plays the tutor Bjorn, a man who can’t handle his liquor, apparently. The movie also features plenty of returning Anderson players and Hollywood stars getting on the fun. That includes Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, and Hope Davis.
The Phoenician Scheme arrives in theaters just in time for the big summer cinematic crush. It premieres on May 30, 2025. Whether or not you’ll be there on opening night is probably not much of a mystery. At this point you either love Wes Anderson’s movies or you don’t. And this one looks to be as Wes Anderson-y as it gets.
Content shared from nerdist.com.