As studios, production houses, and agents return from the holidays and burn off the last energy of this ceaseless, shameless awards season, numerous projects are finding lifeblood. Case in point: at Wednesday’s New York Film Critics Circle dinner I had a brief exchange with Annie Baker, who was present to accept their Best First Film honor and casually mentioned a new project that’s set up at A24, who’d shepherded Janet Planet to such success. She was tight-lipped on further details (like I could help asking), but a couple inquiries confirmed casting is in motion; likely shooting commences before long.
Equally terse, likewise exciting is notice (via The New Yorker) that Lee Chang-dong has been writing his first film since 2018’s Burning with ambitions to shoot this year. That’s about the furthest we’re getting right now, but patience isn’t even necessary: with his earliest films having recently been restored there’s likely new-to-you cinema readily available.
I’ll venture a guess that Danny Boyle’s latest project proves quite different from the above. While 28 Years Later is still months from debuting, a sequel (28 Years Later: The Bone Temple) has already been directed by Nia DaCosta, and––audience response depending––will start a trilogy “culminating in a third, Boyle-helmed entry,” per Empire, with Alex Garland back on scripting duties. Here’s hoping it also brings Boyle together with his greatest collaborator, Anthony Dod Mantle.
Cineuropa tells us Kornél Mundruczó (White God, Pieces of a Woman) has receiving financing for The Revolution According to Kamo, which another piece reveals is a Stalin biopic told from the perspective of his friend Kamo, spanning “30 years, from 1891-1922, and paints the portrait of the birth of the world’s most murderous dictator through the eyes of his best friend, ally, devoted disciple and henchman.” Mundruczó claims it functions more à la gangster pictures, detailing “the mechanics of power and how one man rises to the top.” Cameras roll in autumn, making 2026 a verdant time for hilariously defensive and reactionary sections of X, the Everything App, to snarl at any negative characterization of Josef Stalin.
It’d be remiss not to note the first still from Arnaud Desplechin’s An Affair, one of our most-anticipated 2025 premieres. (Not releases, because U.S. distribution’s been anathema to the great French filmmaker in recent years.) Thus far we only know An Affair tells “a story of impossible love through the career of virtuoso pianist Mathias,” with François Civil, Charlotte Rampling, Hippolyte Girardot, and Nadia Tereszkiewicz leading its cast. Expect much more in months to come.
