In the decade that’s passed since winning Best Picture at the 2016 Oscars with hard-hitting journo drama Spotlight, it would be fair to say that multi-hyphenate filmmaker Tom McCarthy and his two feature-length directorial follow-ups — boy-and-his-polar-bear Disney+ family flick Timmy Failure, and po-faced Matt Damon drama Stillwater — haven’t quite reached those same giddy heights. That may be about to change if the newly Deadline confirmed cast for his next movie is anything to go by.
Per the trade’s reporting, McCarthy’s next movie — described as “a darkly comic drama” — has assembled a bit of an all-star line-up, including *deep breath* Paul Rudd, Evan Peters, Amy Ryan, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Tatiana Maslany, and Jason Clarke. Adapted by McCarthy alongside his Stillwater co-writers Thomas Bidegain and Noé Debré from Nathaniel Rich’s 2019 bestseller Losing Earth, the true-story inspired film is, as the description shared by Deadline details, “set at a beachside resort in Florida in 1980, when twenty experts gather for a weekend conference on a global issue that is starting to gain traction: the effects of Co2 emissions on the climate. The group of scientists, activists, and policymakers have one simple mandate from Congress — write a statement about what to do. Easier said than done.”
The climate crisis is a hot-button issue that’s been handled with mixed results in recent years by the likes of apocalyptic musical The End and Adam McKay’s satirical effort Don’t Look Up. It seems however that McCarthy is serious about treating both the darkly comic and dramatic sides of his as-yet-untitled film with equal gravitas, especially given the talent being brought in both in front of and behind the camera. Among the off-screen talent assembled by McCarthy here are The Piano cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, No Country For Old Men art director and production designer extraordinaire John Goldsmith, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind costume designer Melissa Toth, and Leave No Trace editor Jane Rizzo.
While we don’t have an exact ETA for McCarthy’s latest movie just yet, we do know that it’s due to start filming next month. We’ll bring you more on this one as soon as production starts, er, heating up. Poor choice of words…
