‘The Entertainment System Is Down’: Kirsten Dunst & Daniel Brühl Join Ruben Östlund’s Next Film

Anamaria Vartolomei, the breakout star of Audrey Diwan’s Venice prizewinning “Happening,” is under the spotlight at this year’s Cannes Film Festival playing strong women in a pair of movies, “Being Maria” and “The Count Monte Cristo.” Both movies are supported by Chanel for which Vartolomei is an ambassador. Vartolomei says since starring in Diwan’s drama “Happening,” which was set in the 1960s and centered around the then-illegal act of abortion, she has continued being lured to demanding roles with political and social themes.

Lana Del Rey has revealed that she wrote a song for the James Bond film Spectre, but it was rejected by the franchise’s producers.The singer was speaking backstage at the Ivor Novello Awards in London this week (May 23), where she picked up the Special International Award.As the BBC reports, she was asked about the prospect of recording a Bond theme, to which she said she had already given it a shot, before beginning to sing her song ‘24’, from her fourth album ‘Honeymoon’, released the same year as the film.“I wrote that for them,” Lana said. Listen to the song below:The eventual theme for that film, ‘Writing’s on the Wall’, was recorded by Sam Smith and became the first Bond theme to reach Number One on the UK Singles Chart.“Sam, you did a wonderful job,” Del Rey quipped, before saying she had not given up hope at making a song for the film series.“But I’m going to continue to do my little Nancy Sinatra thing every now and then and just pretend it’s the title track,” she added.It was not the only time that Bond producers turned away a stellar music name for the choice of Spectre’s signature song.

Mark your calendar, Steven Spielberg fans. THR reports that the American auteur’s next film will hit theaters on May 15, 2026, courtesy of Universal and Amblin Entertainment.

Sean Baker is a filmmaker who likes to make films about the fringes of society. And many times, that includes a story about a sex worker, such as in “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project,” or his latest, “Anora.” It’s a world Baker feels is not only ripe with stories, but also serves a purpose in the grander scheme of things.

Travel plans are being altered, ministerial meetings in Westminster are being cancelled, as Rishi Sunak has now finally called the much-anticipated General Election for July 4 - and with more than 100 MPs throwing in the towel at this election, including a former Prime Minister, the next parliament will look very different.

Despite many of his generation taking time between films, Paul Schrader is a filmmaker who has kept working quite prolifically over the decades. Since 2002, he’s directed no fewer than 11 features.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Swedish director Ruben Östlund, who won Cannes Film Festival‘s Palme d’Or for “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness,” was among the guests at the German Films and Medienboard Reception on May 18 in the garden of the Mondrian Hotel in Cannes. Östlund, who is in the Riviera resort to promote his latest production, “The Entertainment System Is Down,” was accompanied by Philippe Bober of Coproduction Office, one of the film’s producers, and Erik Hemmendorf of Plattform Produktion, Östlund’s Swedish producer. (They are pictured above.) German Films, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, was represented at the event by managing director Simone Baumann, and Medienboard, which is a film fund for the Berlin-Brandenburg region, was represented by its CEO Kirsten Niehuus.

Michaela Zee A24 is closing an eight-figure deal to acquire the U.S. rights to Ruben Östlund’s “The Entertainment System Is Down,” Variety has confirmed.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Manila-based production outfit Parallax Studio and entertainment company Saga Film Studios have formed a joint venture that will distribute the two-part Western epic “Horizon: An American Saga” in the Philippines. The deal is the first of a number of acquisitions planned by the joint venture. The “Horizon: An American Saga” films are directed by and star Academy Award winner Kevin Costner.

Annika Pham Back in Cannes a year after presiding over the main Cannes jury, the two-time Palme d’or winner Ruben Öslund unveiled more details about his next mega-project, English-language “The Entertainment is Down,” which he said should be ready for Cannes 2026. The press conference, attended by the hottest talent and producers from the Nordic region and beyond, was hosted by Film i Väst, one of Europe’s largest regional film funds.

Jessica Kiang The Chinese title of Jia Zhangke‘s mesmerizing “Caught by the Tides,” a masterfully poetic and pioneering fusion of the old and the new, can be translated in several ways. Jia himself suggests “The Drifting Generation,” but it can also mean “The Romantic Generation” with the etymology of “romantic” lying in the Chinese words for wind and current.

Paul Schrader revealed first details about his next feature project entitled Non Compos Mentis, at the press conference for his Cannes Competition title Oh, Canada on Saturday.

“It’s f–ing hard to make a good airplane movie,” Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund emphasized multiple times this morning in Cannes as he spoke to international press about his plans for The Entertainment System Is Down, the latest feature he has set to direct starring a buzzy cast led by Kirsten Dunst and Daniel Brühl. 

Annika Pham Billed the ‘Trollywood’ of the North for its close ties to talent, the leading Scandinavian regional film fund Film i Väst in Sweden’s Trollhättan has boarded the Noomi Rapace starrer “Mother, to be helmed by Macedonia’s Teona Stugar Mitevska. The biopic, in which Rapace will play the legendary religious figure Mother Teresa, will mark the English-language debut of esteemed auteur Mitevska, credited for the 2019 Berlin entry “God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya”.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent “Succession” star Nicholas Braun is in talks to star in Ruben Östlund’s “The Entertainment System Is Down.” Keanu Reeves, Kirsten Dunst and Daniel Brühl are already on board the buzzy satire. “The Entertainment System Is Down” is one of the sexiest packages being shopped at the Cannes Film Market, where the Coproduction Office has launched international sales.

When Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea) is beaten up outside the one dance club in the village where he grew up, his father takes up the cudgels, chivvying the local police chief into finding out who did it. It would be obvious enough to anyone but dad Dragoi (Bogdan Dumitrache) that this is a straight-up case of gay-bashing, which would seem to signal that Emanuel Parvu’s Cannes Competition title Three Kilometers to the End of the World, a slice of Romanian life, will be a worthy but familiar story of a boy’s coming out to a hostile world. Indeed, bloodied Adi with his black eyes and traumatic lesions is soon being punished, locked in his room by his parents as his desperate mother prays to the icons on the wall for guidance. We have undoubtedly been down this donkey-track before. 

The cast of Kinds of Kindness took over the red carpet at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on Friday afternoon (May 17).

Olivier Assayas is back on the Croisette of the Cannes Film Festival, albeit at the Cannes Market. And the French auteur’s next project is easily one of the buzziest packages at the festival so far.

There have been countless books written about the immortal star, Elizabeth Taylor, even some credited to her as both memoir or autobiography including 1989’s “Elizabeth On Elizabeth”. But a book released on January 1, 1965 probably comes closest to a pure autobiography, and looking at the cover it simply says “Elizabeth Taylor by Elizabeth Taylor”. It is a by the numbers account of her life through her own words up until that point, but the fact is it was actually written by Richard Meryman, a journalist credited with among other things the last interview with Marilyn Monroe (published two days before her August 4, 1962 death). Meryman got Taylor to sit for some taped recorded sessions in 1964 out which he would be able to write the book as if Taylor did it herself. Now exactly 60 years later those presumed “lost” tape recordings have been found and cleared for release by Taylor’s and Meryman’s estates. They have been in fact in Meryman’s wife’s possession all these years, but now filmmaker Nanette Burstein (Hillary, The Kid Stays In The Picture) has rediscovered a treasure trove of about 40 hours of interview in order to produce the new HBO Documentary, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes“.

Keanu Reeves (John Wick) is now confirmed for Ruben Östlund’s anticipated upcoming film The Entertainment System Is Down and we can reveal that he’ll be joined in the cast by Kirsten Dunst (Civil War) and Daniel Brühl (Rush).