Summer traditionally heralds the arrival of blockbuster season, but with it comes a counterpoint a little closer to the arthouse. While the superhero escapades and planet-obliterating CGI rage at peak decibel levels, the warm months also bring at least a couple releases from brand-name auteurs who wield a sense of can’t-miss occasion for a different subset of viewer. Though these films can do quite well for themselves at the box office, we may nonetheless think of it as anti-blockbuster season.
This year, that slot will be occupied by Wes Anderson, whose latest film Asteroid City has been slated to crater cinemas on 16 June in the US and 29 June in the UK. This morning brought the first trailer for the hotly anticipated new transmission from Planet Wes, and with a world premiere at Cannes all but guaranteed, what better time to take stock of all that’s currently known about this intergalactic hyperjump into whimsy?
Anderson commenced shooting on the sprawling ensemble piece in August 2021, tired of sitting on his hands during the thick of COVID and having long since completed The French Dispatch. The small Spanish suburb of Chinchón, fifty kilometers outside of Madrid, stood in for a desert town in the American Southwest that sprang up around a space rock that crash-landed there years before.
In this expanse of sand and sun, ‘Asteroid Day’ takes place to commemorate the day the meteorite struck, as Jason Schwartzman’s put-upon widower and his children find themselves stranded en route to visit their grandfather (Tom Hanks, making his Wes debut). At the same time, actress Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson) rolls into town – just as is turns out the town’s Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention appears to have made contact with an extra-terrestrial.
Our first glimpse at Asteroid City reveals the film’s star-studded cast – beyond Schwartzman, Johansson and Hanks (who received top billing), there’s Jeffrey Wright, Maya Hawke, Matt Dillon, Steve Carrell and Tony Revolori, plus Jake Ryan as Schwartzman’s son Woodrow, a couple of years after he stole the show in Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade.
As longtime LWLies readers now, we’re big fans of Wes, so we’ll be sure to keep our telescope fixed on this one – fingers crossed for a ritzy Cannes premiere…
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