Ari Aster’s next film has found its lead in Joaquin Phoenix

Hav­ing offi­cial­ly beat­en the sopho­more slump with the ambi­tious, warm­ly-received Mid­som­mar back in 2019, Ari Aster has been mint­ed a Hot Hol­ly­wood Tal­ent – the sort of name-brand film­mak­er with free rein to pur­sue orig­i­nal script con­cepts and hire the top actors in the biz to real­ize them. He’s now doing just that, with break­ing news of his third fea­ture mak­ing waves due to the elu­sive A‑lister already attached.

Dead­line reports that Joaquin Phoenix will step up as the lead in Aster’s devel­op­ing project, revealed to be titled Dis­ap­point­ment Blvd. One might think that with such a title, he’s serv­ing one up for the crit­ics on a sil­ver plat­ter, but that sort of con­fi­dence is what being a Hot Hol­ly­wood Tal­ent is all about.

In the film, Phoenix will por­tray ​“one of the most suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs of all time” in an ​“inti­mate, decades-span­ning por­trait.” This sounds like a depar­ture from Aster’s home realm of hor­ror, though it’s unclear what he’s piv­ot­ing to. We’ve got movies about what ego­ma­ni­a­cal a‑holes Ray Kroc and Steve Jobs were, so maybe this one will take aim at Walt Dis­ney. And maybe, for law­suit-avoid­ance rea­sons, he’ll be named some­thing like Schmalt Schmis­ney, which would be fun.

For Phoenix, tak­ing a new role comes as a weighty deci­sion; he doesn’t work for work’s sake, tak­ing only the scripts that piqué his inter­est with direc­tors he holds in high esteem. His first role post-Jok­er still hasn’t arrived, with Mike Mills‘ Cmon Cmon await­ing release until fur­ther notice, and Aster’s project appears to be his next after that.

With a busi­ness­man as his next sub­ject, Aster may not be diverg­ing that far from hor­ror after all, on a sec­ond thought. For what greater hor­ror is there, ladies and gents, than capitalism?