I usually ignore trade stories about forthcoming films — better to hold off until they’re wrapped and in post. But given my admiration for director Ari Aster (Midsommar, Hereditary), a 4.27 post about Aster’s Disappointment Boulevard has my attention.
It’s some kind of eerie creep-out that will costar Joaquin Phoenix and Meryl Streep, according to World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy. The info is from DeuxMoi and “a source from MTL Productions.” A24 will distribute.
On 4.17, the signing of Phoenix in Disappointment Boulevard was reported on by Dread Central. Pic will reportedly begin filming in Montreal on 6.28.21.
The original title was Beau is Afraid, and apparently grew out of Aster’s 2011 short film, Beau. The decade-old short has been described as a “surrealist horror film set in an alternate present.” Phoenix would play an “extremely anxious man who never knew his father, and has a fraught relationship with his overbearing mother.”
IMDB logline: “A neurotic middle-aged man’s trip back home is delayed indefinitely when his keys are mysteriously taken from his door. He is subsequently haunted by an increasingly sinister chain of upsetting events.”
On the film’s IMDB page Aster describes it as “a sickly, domestic melodrama in the vein of Douglas Sirk” — a description sure to be welcomed by Sirk-worshipping snob critics the world over.
