Wes Anderson’s new film Aster­oid City will hit Earth in an ear­ly-sum­mer release date

Apolo­gies in advance — while everyone’s still occu­pied with the end-of-year mad dash to catch up with the movies they’ve missed over the past twelve months, whether for rea­sons of well-round­ed­ness or list-mak­ing, we’ve already set our sights on the boun­ties of 2023. Though that’s only because the stu­dios did so first, stak­ing out a release date for one of the most eager­ly antic­i­pat­ed titles com­ing down the pike.

Wes Ander­son​‘s next fea­ture Aster­oid City will touch down with an offi­cial the­atri­cal run start­ing 23 June, 2023, per an emailed press blast from US dis­trib­u­tor Focus Fea­tures. Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures Inter­na­tion­al will han­dle the title out­side of the States, though it’s safe to assume that the UK will lay eye­balls on the film around the same time.

The ear­ly-sum­mer release date would seem to suit a project set in the great out­doors dur­ing the warm months: the film revolves around the 1955 Junior Stargazer/​Space Cadet con­ven­tion, a gath­er­ing that col­lects astro-enthu­si­asts from across Amer­i­ca in a fic­ti­tious desert town for com­pe­ti­tion and cama­raderie beneath the cos­mos. But something’s not right — the pro­vid­ed syn­op­sis hints at ​“world-chang­ing events” that will spec­tac­u­lar­ly dis­rupt the fes­tiv­i­ties, like­ly a hap­pen­ing of galac­tic sig­nif­i­cance. Shades of Wet Hot Amer­i­can Sum­mer.

As is the case with most of Anderson’s recent films, it’s a mas­sive ensem­ble piece filled out by a con­stel­la­tion of stars (of the movie vari­ety), includ­ing such past col­lab­o­ra­tors as Jason Schwartz­man, Scar­lett Johans­son, Jef­frey Wright, Til­da Swin­ton, Liev Schreiber, Bryan Cranston, Edward Nor­ton, Adrien Brody, Stephen Park, Willem Dafoe, and Jeff Gold­blum. And they’re joined by an impres­sive line­up of new­com­ers to the Ander­son Reper­to­ry Play­ers, such as Tom Han­ks, Steve Carell, Matt Dil­lon, Hong Chau, Mar­got Rob­bie, and Maya Hawke.

A pub­lic debut in June all but guar­an­tees a world-pre­mière berth the pre­vi­ous month at Cannes, a his­tor­i­cal­ly wel­com­ing home for Ander­son that pro­grammed his last film The French Dis­patch for their open­ing night selec­tion in 2021. Expect to see an immac­u­late­ly tai­lored cor­duroy suit against the red car­pet on the Croisette.