Richard Linklater's ‘New Wave' Starts Production, Zoey Deutch Cast as Jean Seberg

This past January, I posted a casting notice indicating that Richard Linklater’s “New Wave” would start shooting in Paris on March 4. That seems to have been correct intel. We’re now off and running on Linklater’s love letter to Godard, Truffaut and company.

We also have some casting news as Zoey Deutch has been cast to play “Breathless” actress Jean Seberg. Deutch revealed her Seberg look on Instagram. Seberg was American, so Deutch’s casting makes perfect sense. The film will reunite the actress and Linklater following 2016’s “Everybody Wants Some!!”

“New Wave” will be Linklater’s first project shot entirely in French. The film will reconstruct the story behind the creation of the Nouvelle Vague movement in French cinema and focus on the production of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1959 groundbreaker, “A Bout de Souffle” (“Breathless”).

The characters in the film will include legendary filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Cocteau, Robert Bresson, Roberto Rossellini, Jean-Pierre Melville, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette — most of them were responsible for the rise of the Nouvelle Vague in the ‘60s. No other casting details are known at this time.

In a recent interview, Linklater had confirmed the project and went on to describe it as being “like a New Wave film” — I’m also hearing that it will be shot in black and white.

Linklater is up there with the best filmmakers of his generation. His filmography is as original and diverse as they come: “Dazed and Confused,” “Waking Life,” “The School of Rock,” “Boyhood” and the ‘Before’ trilogy, among many more.

He has another critically-acclaimed film that’s been hitting the festival circuit, and is due to be released theatrically and on Netflix in June. It’s called “Hit Man” and it’s a wonderfully sexy screwball noir starring Glenn Powell and Adria Arjona.