Steven Soderbergh’s next film brings togeth­er all of your favourite actors

Steven Soder­bergh doesn’t have an off switch. Though it looks like 2020 will be the first year with­out a new some­thing by the obses­sive­ly pro­lif­ic film­mak­er – and even then, due only to a force majeure halt­ing progress around the globe – his Meryl Streep-led com­e­dy Let Them All Talk is report­ed­ly all in the can and ready to run, and nev­er one to waste time, he’s already begun lay­ing track for his next next movie.

Per a report today in Dead­line, Soder­bergh has com­menced pro­duc­tion on No Sud­den Moves, a heist pic­ture with a dizzy­ing cast unit­ing an unlike­ly con­stel­la­tion of stars. Take a deep breath: Don Chea­dle, Beni­cio del Toro, Jon Hamm, Ray Liot­ta, Stranger Things break­out David Har­bour, actor-direc­tors Amy Seimetz and Bill Duke, Suc­ces­sion favorite Kier­an Culkin, the epony­mous Hon­ey Boy Noah Jupe, SMILF cre­ator-star Frankie Shaw, and Uncut Gems bomb­shell Julia Fox. A ​“four-quad­rant” cast, as Hol­ly­wood types say.

They’re all involved with a sim­ple ripoff job gone ter­ri­bly awry in Detroit cir­ca 1955; some crooks have been sent to pur­loin a cru­cial doc­u­ment, and their scram­ble to secure their own hides after every­thing goes kablooey sends the drama­tis per­son­ae through a per­ilous city in the throes of racial demo­graph­ic shift. The cast­ing of Duke in par­tic­u­lar, famed for direct­ing the Black labor land­mark The Killing Floor in 1984 and last seen in Soderbergh’s High Fly­ing Bird, seems to sug­gest that the direc­tor will con­tin­ue the aggres­sive­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist bent of his recent films.

The film will pre­mière on HBO Max, as part of an over­all deal Soder­bergh signed with the emerg­ing stream­ing plat­form to lure him away from Net­flix. He’s made it clear in recent years that he’s relin­quish­ing his attach­ment to brick-and-mor­tar the­aters, will­ing to bring his work to who­ev­er will fund it and get it out to the pub­lic. If the money’s green and the checks don’t bounce, Soderbergh’s mak­ing a deal.

While the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues to put a strain on shoot­ing process­es, Soder­bergh has announced a plan to forge ahead unde­terred, with masks for the crew and cast (when­ev­er they’re not on cam­era). At this point, it’s real­ly start­ing to look like he’ll stop mak­ing movies when he’s dead. Even that much seems like an underestimation.