It seems A24 can't get enough of horror movies lately. Having only recently released X and Bodies Bodies Bodies, and with Men's release on the horizon, A24 is showing no signs of slowing down with its upcoming movie Disappointment Blvd. Written and directed by Ari Aster — who gained a cult following with his horrors Hereditary and Midsommar — Disappointment Blvd. will star Academy Award-winner Joaquin Phoenix in what might be the world's best collaboration.
Reportedly a horror-comedy, fans of Aster know how unpredictable the director can be and want to know more about his new movie. Who else will be in it? What will it be about? and do I need to be afraid? Fortunately, despite A24 remaining characteristically tight-lipped about Disappointment Blvd., these questions can be answered.
The Director
Disappointment Blvd. will be Aster's third movie with A24, his first being Hereditary in 2018 and his second being Midsommar in 2019. Aster made his feature film debut with Hereditary, a melodramatic horror about a miniatures artist (Toni Collette) whose family is torn apart by evil spirits following her mother's death. A huge critical success, the movie raked $81 million at the box office and remains A24's highest-grossing movie of all time.
Folk horror Midsommar was also wildly successful and catapulted its star Florence Pugh into the spotlight. Coyly described by Aster as a breakup movie, Midsommar follows Dani (Pugh) who, following a recent tragedy in the family (notice a theme here?), decides to join her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) on a trip to his friend's ancestral commune in Sweden. Amidst the Midsummer festivities, Dani hopes to patch up her rocky relationship with Christian but instead finds herself embraced by the "eccentric" commune. Aster worked with cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski on both of these movies and will reunite with him in Disappointment Blvd.
The Plot
Following the tradition of his previous movies, Aster will serve as both writer and director of Disappointment Blvd. While the movie is shrouded in mystery and doesn't have a trailer yet, it will be a decades-spanning horror-comedy about a famously successful entrepreneur. And if Hereditary and Midsommar are anything to go by, it will be a genre-bending horror-comedy at that. In conversation with UC Santa Barbara students, Aster described Disappointment Blvd. as a 4-hour long "nightmare comedy," though whether he was joking about its length remains to be seen.
Additionally, there are rumors that Disappointment Blvd. is a reworking of Aster's leaked script, Beau is Afraid: a movie that appears to be based on his 2011 short Beau. According to a 2020 article by Discussing Film, Beau is Afraid was set to follow an anxious man (Joaquin Phoenix) who makes a shocking discovery about his past after his mother's death. Despite both allegedly sharing the same actor, they appear unrelated — there is no entrepreneur in Beau and no mention of a dead mother in Blvd. — and so this theory should be taken with a handful of salt.
The Cast
Joaquin Phoenix leads the cast, presumably as the entrepreneur referred to in the synopsis. A behind-the-scenes photo of Phoenix shows the actor looking haggard with a belly and thinning, grey hair. Almost unrecognizable here, Phoenix is known for undergoing crazy transformations and famously lost 52 pounds to play Arthur Fleck in The Joker: a role which earned him his first Academy Award.
Academy Award-nominee Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone, Birdman) will join Phoenix, alongside Michael Gandolfini (The Sopranos, The Many Saints of Newark), Zoe Lister-Jones (Life in Pieces, Band Aid), Parker Posey (Dazed and Confused, Colombus), Denis Ménochet (Inglourious Basterds, The French Dispatch), Kylie Rogers (Collateral Beauty, Miracles From Heaven), Hayley Squires (Collateral, Adult Material), and veteran stage and screen actors: Stephen McKinley Henderson (Lady Bird, Dune), Nathan Lane (The Birdcage, The Producers), and Patti LuPone (Penny Dreadful, Hollywood). Smaller websites have reported that Meryl Streep will star as Phoenix's overbearing mother in the movie, though there is no official confirmation of this.
The Release Date
A24 will distribute Disappointment Blvd. as well as co-produce it with Square Pegs: Ari Aster and producer Lars Knudsen's production company. Disappointment Blvd. began production in June last year and is set for release later this year, though no official date has been given yet.
There is speculation that the movie will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival due to take place from 17 to 28 May 2022. Fortunately, the festival announces its lineup on the 14th, so fans won't have to wait long to find out.