Whereas his reunion with “Secrets and techniques & Lies” star Marianne Jean-Baptiste for 2024’s “Exhausting Truths” could not have yielded the awards glory many have been hoping for, Mike Leigh rides on, gearing as much as begin work on a brand new undertaking taking pictures in 2025.
In a launch obtained by IndieWire, it was introduced Leigh might be reteaming with “Exhausting Truths” collaborators Bleecker Avenue, Cornerstone, StudioCanal, and U.Ok. financier Film4 on bringing the movie to market. Desmar additionally joins the staff as an fairness financier, with Georgina Lowe producing on behalf of Leigh’s manufacturing shingle, Skinny Man Movies.
Plot particulars on the movie are underneath wraps because it’s possible not even Leigh is aware of fully what the movie might be about. As is his follow, Leigh comes into a brand new work solely with free concepts and a solid of actors he’s considering shaping these concepts with. Over the course of months-long rehearsals, his solid independently construct their characters earlier than uniting to improvise collectively and type a script.
In describing this course of in an interview with IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio, Jean-Baptiste stated, “Principally, there isn’t any pitch. The one pitch is, ‘Let’s work collectively once more.’ I do know what the method is, so I do know I’m going in utterly blind, that I’ve to show up with an inventory of folks that I do know, and that we’re going to filter that listing, and that we’ll get to 2, three folks, 5 on this case, and merge them, and that’s going to be the start line of constructing this character. However there’s no, like, ‘It’s going to be about this kind of girl or that kind of girl.’”
Final yr, on the New York Movie Competition, Leigh additionally caught up with IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, with whom he shared the challenges of getting work made, not solely as a person in his 80s, however as an artist who doesn’t come right into a undertaking with a transparent set of plans. Nonetheless, even at that second, Leigh was planning his subsequent strikes.
“I’m solely 81,” he stated. “It’s a problem bodily. My cinematographer, Dick Pope, who I’ve labored with ever since ‘Life is Candy,’ had main coronary heart surgical procedure simply earlier than we began taking pictures. Our sound recordist, who we’ve labored with for years, was a bit bit youthful than us, and went off to hospital twice through the shoot. I can’t get upstairs simply. However hey, we did it. Something’s potential. Retirement doesn’t appear significantly engaging. I’ve received notions kicking round. I’m not going to let you know. It relies on how a lot cash we get.”
Sadly, solely a short while after that interview was given, Pope handed away, making Leigh’s upcoming characteristic the primary not be shot be his longtime buddy and collaborator in 35 years.
“Exhausting Truths” was launched within the U.S. by Bleecker Avenue earlier this yr on January 10, preceded by an awards qualifying run on December 6, 2024. Studiocanal dealt with the U.Ok. launch, which kicked off at this time, whereas Cornerstone handled worldwide gross sales, as it is going to be doing as soon as extra for Leigh’s newest work on the European Movie Market in Berlin, which takes place February 13-19, together with the seventy fifth Berlinale.