Ari Aster's ‘Eddington' Begins Filming, Shot by Darius Khondji

If you regularly browse this site then today’s news shouldn’t come as much of a surprise.

A24 has announced that Ari Aster’s “Eddington” will star Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler. Also part of the cast are Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward and Clifton Collins Jr. The film began production this week in New Mexico.

For Stone and Phoenix, the film will be a reunion as they starred as the leads in Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man,” released in 2015. A truly underrated work that has been criminally ignored all these years. I still stand by my assertion that it’s Allen’s best film of the last 10 years.

A major plus, and something I did not know, is that two-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Darius Khondji will lens the film. He’s one of the best DPs in the biz with a filmography that includes “Se7en,” “Midnight in Paris” and “Uncut Gems.”

Rumored to be a neo-western that takes place during the pandemic, “Eddington” is being described as an “ensemble film.” Here’s the synopsis I gathered a few months ago:

The film tackles a couple (Lindsay and Marc) driving through New Mexico, on their way to Los Angeles, who run out of gas just outside of small town Eddington, New Mexico. Lindsay and Marc decide to enter the town for help. They are, at first, greeted very warmly, but, as nightfall comes, the picturesque setting soon turns into a nightmare.

More intriguingly, in an AMA from 4 years ago, Aster spoke a bit more about “Eddington”:

There was a period of time when I thought “Midsommar” would be the debut feature, and there was a period when I thought another script called “Eddington” might be the first movie. For like five years, I was trying to get that Western-noir dark ensemble comedy going. That won’t be the next one, by the way, though I do still want to make it very badly. I made Hereditary first, but I always had “Midsommar” in my back pocket, like it was right there in me. Although it’s sort of a – I don’t know if you’d call it a revisionist western. It’s contemporary; one foot is in the western and one foot is even more heavily in the noir genre. So it’s like a film noir ensemble western dark comedy.

Aster (“Hereditary” and “Midsommar”) is coming off last year’s polarizing “Beau is Afraid.” A24 has produced all three of his films, so far, and “Eddington” will be their fourth collaboration together.