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

18 Feb 2021

Words by Charles Bramesco

Two men, one behind bars and one outside them, engaged in conversation.
Two men, one behind bars and one outside them, engaged in conversation.
He’ll play one of the most suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs of all time” in Dis­ap­point­ment Blvd, for A24.

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?

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