Second update: Indiewire reports Phoenix has left Haynes’ film five days before production was expected to begin, leaving the project in an uncertain state.
Update: Haynes will reteam with cinematographer Maryse Alberti (Velvet Goldmine, Dottie Gets Spanked, Poison) for his Joaquin Phoenix-led drama, which will co-star Danny Ramirez, Deadline reports.
Less the breaking of new ground than ensuring he’s here to stay, there’s been two updates on projects in Todd Haynes’ purview. In 2022 he told us of plans to direct Kate Winslet in an HBO series, which we learned last year is an adaptation of Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize winner Trust. Today Variety informs us Trust is set at HBO, with an official logline in tow:
“In a story told from multiple, competing perspectives, a 1920s Wall Street tycoon amasses a sudden fortune but loses a beloved wife. Decades later, his attempts to control the narrative of his life are undone by a biographer who uncovers the ultimate secrets of the legendary marriage.”
Production on it likely has to wait a minute. Haynes is soon to begin shooting his Joaquin Phoenix collaboration, previously described as a 1930s-set gay drama. Today offers a major update: it’s a detective film that, per mk2, “draws on tropes of classic film noir that reimagines the hardboiled detective tale as a lyrical, sexually charged romance.”
Here’s the full synopsis:
Richard Rent (Phoenix) – a volatile cop in 1930s Los Angeles – and Joe Thomas – a deeply assimilated Native American schoolteacher – become targets of the city’s corrupt political machine, and must flee together to Mexico in order to survive. In the humid jungles of the Western coastline, as the threat of global war looms, they enter a brutal yet tender love affair that rearranges their perceptions of the past, the future, and themselves.
No word on when cameras roll, but fingers can still be crossed for a Cannes 2025 premiere.