He may have made his name reinventing horror as the twisted mind behind Hereditary and Midsommar, but director Ari Aster’s next project with A24 is set to be his biggest contribution to the genre yet. The mysteriously titled Disappointment Blvd., sounds just as ambitious a movie from the filmmaker which he has previously described as “a four hour long nightmare comedy” and, now, the director has given us an update on when we might be able to see his much-delayed magnum opus.
The title is set to be “an intimate, decades-spanning portrait of one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time,” according to Deadline, who broke the news. Starring in the main role is Joaquin Phoenix, who recently starred in another A24 movie, Mike Mills’ acclaimed C’mon C’mon. Two A24 movies in a row after winning an Oscar for Joker? We truly do live in a society.
Alongside him, in as yet undisclosed roles, are Nathan Lane and Amy Ryan, who both recently starred in Only Murder’s in the Building, the legendary Patti LuPone, Parker Posey (The Sweetest Thing), Stephen McKinley Henderson (Dune), Denis Ménochet (The French Dispatch), and Zoe Lister-Jones (New Girl) as well as Kylie Rogers, Hayley Squires and Michael Gandolfini.
And aside from the title and cast? Well, we don’t know much else about Disappointment Blvd so far. The movie was still slated to be released in 2022 and there were rumours it would premiere at Cannes Film Festival, and further rumours that its absence was down to alleged disagreements over its hefty runtime. With the movie currently standing at three and a half hours long (hey, it’s less than the four hour run-time originally planned), Editor-in-chief of World of Reel, Jordan Ruimy, shared that a producer on the movie told him A24 would like it to be shorter whilst Ari refuses to cut it down anymore. Awkward! Now, in an interview with French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, Ari has revealed that, unfortunately for us, there’s still a lot of editing to be done on the movie and it’s unlikely it will be premiering at any of the film festivals this year such as Venice or New York.
“It is not finished! I am a perfectionist, I take the entire manufacturing process very seriously. Despite time and money restrictions. It is also good to preserve the mystery,” Ari said in the interview, translated by World of Reel. “In reality, post-production isn’t finished, I don’t even have the final edit. I still have work to do on sound and visual effects. I doubt I’m done for the September festivals. But I can tell you that collaborating with Joaquin Phoenix is one of the best experiences of my life. I am very proud of his performance and I love him with all my heart.”
It looks like, then, we’ll have to wait until at least 2023 before we see the horror comedy epic and for now can only speculate which master entrepreneur Joaquin and Ari will be taking on in the ambitious biopic. Kellogg? Howard Hughes? Kim Kardashian? We know it’s not Trump at least, because they said successful.