Charlie Kaufman Has Written A New Movie, Ryan Gosling Eyed To Star

Charlie Kaufman’s latest endeavour, a short film titled “Jackals & Fireflies,” just made its theatrical debut, playing alongside “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” at New York City’s IFC Center on Thursday.

Kaufman spoke to IndieWire’s Kate Erbland about the short and, more intriguingly, revealed details about a potential new film he’s working on, this one starring Ryan Gosling:

I wrote a screenplay that Ryan Gosling might do, might act in, and we’re going to go out with it at some point, I guess, and see if we can get it set up.

Kaufman’s brand of existentialist cinema was already a hard sell before the pandemic and is now a virtually impossible endeavour to finance unless Netflix decides to work with him again.

Kaufman even acknowledged this himself. Despite his critically-acclaimed films, ranging from 2008’s “Synecdoche, New York” to 2015’s “Anomalisa,” he couldn’t find sufficient funding to make 2020’s “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” until Netflix reached out to help.

I could play around and experiment, but the business has changed enormously, and it all happened around 2008 when studios stopped making movies and started making tentpoles,” said Kaufman. “The reason something like Netflix attracts filmmakers is because there’s nowhere else to make those things. It’s infuriating to me when people say Netflix is ruining movies because—no, movies ruined movies, studios ruined movies, and that’s the truth.

Having Gosling as the potential lead for this next film will probably help Kaufman find buyers. I gather this mysterious new project is in its very earliest stages. Regardless, let’s hope we get to see another new film from him sooner rather than later.