Stephen Frears Says His Career Has Hit a Wall: “Studios Only Interested in Monsters and Superheroes”

Stephen Frears, 85, has been trying to make “Wilder & Me,” a film about the final, faltering chapter of Billy Wilder’s legendary career, but like his subject, he’s facing his own late-career battle with momentum.

“I have a script ready for a film about Billy Wilder, but for the moment it’s sitting in a drawer,” Frears tells Il Secolo. “There simply isn’t any money in Britain or England for the kind of films I want to make. All of Europe is broke.”

Frears says the budget for the project would be at least “ten million euros.” And it doesn’t sound like he has a backup plan, given his admission that “the kind of films” he wants to make are increasingly impossible to finance.

In another interview with La Stampa, Frears lamented that “American studios today aren’t interested in anything except monsters and superheroes.” He went on to say that “calling yourself Frears or Coppola, having a résumé like ours, no longer means anything.”

We’re old, we’re outdated. Young people want something else. It’s not true that art has no age. Sorry, but I’m not optimistic I made films continuously for 50 years, and now things aren’t working.

“Wilder & Me” has a script written by Oscar winner Christopher Hampton (“The Father”) and is supposed to star Christoph Waltz as Wilder, with Maya Hawke, Jon Hamm, and John Turturro rounding out the ensemble. Rather than dramatize the obvious “greatest hits” of Wilder’s golden era, “Wilder & Me” zeroes in on the making of 1978’s “Fedora,” a forgotten and largely dismissed swan song that tried, and failed, to recapture the brilliance of Wilder’s own “Sunset Boulevard.”

Hamm signed up to star as William Holden, who was in both “Fedora” and “Sunset Boulevard”; Turturro plays I.A.L. Diamond, Wilder’s longtime writing partner; and Hawke is supposed to lead as a young woman swept into the chaotic production.

Frears’ last film was “The Lost King,” starring Steve Coogan and Sally Hawkins, back in 2022 — it wasn’t very good and barely made any money. So far, it’s the only film Frears has released this decade. In the 2010s, Frears directed six films, and the decade before that, five.

Since the ’80s, Frears has built up one of the most underrated filmographies in cinema: “My Beautiful Laundrette,” “The Grifters,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” “High Fidelity,” “The Hit,” “Dirty Pretty Things,” “The Queen,” “Prick Up Your Ears,” and “Philomena.”