Following the haunted ache of “The Banshees Of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh is heading somewhere stranger, thornier, and a lot farther from home. The first look at “Wild Horse Nine” has arrived, and McDonagh’s latest appears to trade Irish coastal melancholy for a sun-struck, morally blasted collision of guilt, conspiracy, and old sins on Easter Island. Searchlight will release the film in theaters on November 6, 2026.
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Set in 1973 Chile, shortly before the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende, the film follows CIA agents Chris (John Malkovich) and Lee (Sam Rockwell) as they travel from Santiago to Easter Island on an assignment that puts their trust, history, and loyalties to the test. Searchlight’s official synopsis adds that the pair are dispatched by bureau chief MJ (Steve Buscemi), and that Chris’s growing connection to two rebellious students, played by Mariana di Girolamo and Ailín Salas, threatens to send the whole trip sideways.
That setup alone already sounds like prime McDonagh territory: damaged men, bad decisions, mordant humor, and the nagging sense that history is never quite finished with anybody. McDonagh told Vanity Fair the film “feels very of right now,” despite its period setting, which makes sense given the material—American intervention, political rot, moral self-justification, and men staring too late at the wreckage they helped make. He also described the picture as dealing with guilt, sin, and looking back over a life, with Malkovich playing an aging operative in declining health who’s trying to write a memoir while reckoning with his past.
The cast is pure catnip for McDonagh regulars and general sickos alike. Rockwell reunites with the filmmaker after “Seven Psychopaths” and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” while Parker Posey, Tom Waits, and Buscemi round out a supporting lineup that already feels tuned to McDonagh’s mix of absurdity, menace, and deadpan unease. McDonagh wrote Lee specifically for Rockwell, and he told Vanity Fair he needed someone who could go toe-to-toe with Malkovich, who reportedly gives a sharp, vulnerable, dangerous performance that could put him back in the awards conversation.
The other big draw here is the setting. McDonagh said he had wanted to make a film on Easter Island for more than a decade, drawn to the mystery of the Moai and the island’s remoteness, and “Wild Horse Nine” was ultimately shot there, with additional scenes in Monument Valley. Between that location, the 1970s political backdrop, and McDonagh’s usual appetite for bruised souls and pitch-black punchlines, this already feels less like a conventional espionage movie than a historical tragicomedy with a CIA burn scar running through it.
Searchlight dated “Wild Horse Nine” for November earlier this year, which is exactly the kind of corridor that suggests confidence, even before anyone starts whispering about festivals or awards. For now, the first images are enough to do the job: Malkovich looking severe and haunted, Rockwell right beside him, and McDonagh once again steering a story about compromised men toward somewhere funny, ugly, and potentially devastating. “Wild Horse Nine” opens November 6. Check out the first look images below.
