UPDATE: Neon will debut Steven Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, April 10, 2026 followed by a nationwide release later.
EARLIER: Steven Soderbergh’s been on a roll this year. Two films have been released so far, “Presence” and “Black Bag,” both acclaimed, and he recently premiered a third, independently funded effort, at TIFF, but with mixed results.
Soderbergh’s “The Christophers” is a sly little chamber piece—set mostly inside a house—an art-forgery caper that insists on being a meditation on authenticity, mortality, and artistic compromise. It flirts with being witty and urbane, and at moments it is.
The film didn’t have a distributor until today. Neon has acquired the North American rights to Soderbergh’s latest. A 2026 theatrical release is being eyed. I don’t think it will make much of a splash when it hits theaters.
“The Christophers” currently sits at 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 73 on Metacritic—if you ask me, critics have been a little too kind to this stagey film. Don’t get me wrong: the dialogue-heavy screenplay, courtesy of Ed Solomon, is expertly rendered by Ian McKellen, the star of the show, and he delivers it with the relish of an actor who knows he’s the whole show. McKellen is the magician here: mischievous, commanding, able to pull laughs from every line he utters.
Michaela Coel is the failed artist turned restorer turned counterfeit accomplice, a woman who holds more inside than she ever releases. She plays Lori, a former artist now juggling art restoration and food-truck shifts, recruited by the estranged heirs of famed painter Julian Sklar (McKellen) to finish his abandoned works and share in the profits after his looming death. Disguised as Sklar’s assistant, she enters his home, only to find her scheme unraveling amid betrayals, shifting loyalties, and unexpected twists.
The whole thing has the air of theater. The pacing, at first hampered by talk, only gradually stirs to life, and even then Soderbergh’s direction keeps smoothing over the edges. The script promises titillation and deception—art heists, forged canvases, family betrayals—but what we get is a polite, talky game.
In the meantime, with “The Christophers” now finding a home, we’re all still wondering if any U.S. distributor will bite and pick up the last major fall title, Kaouther Ben Hania’s “The Voice of Hind Rajab.”