Coming off “The Brutalist,” Brady Corbet does not appear to be thinking smaller. According to Variety, Michael Fassbender is in negotiations to join the filmmaker’s next feature. This mystery-shrouded project has already started to gather the kind of attention you would expect after Corbet’s Oscar-winning breakthrough became one of the defining arthouse success stories of the last few years.
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Rumored to be titled “The Origin of the World,” the film would mark Corbet’s follow-up to “The Brutalist,” his three-and-a-half-hour American immigrant epic starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce. That film turned a formally severe, commercially improbable proposition into a major awards player, earning 10 Oscar nominations and winning three, including Best Actor for Brody.
Much about the new project remains unconfirmed, but Selena Gomez has also been linked to the film, and Corbet has already teased another sprawling, long-gestating work involving American mysticism, the occult, Northern California, immigration, and a story spanning well over a century. Speaking at Storyhouse in Dublin earlier this year, Corbet described the film as being “sort of about American mysticism and the history of the occult in America,” adding that he had been reading heavily about cult belief systems and working with occult historian Mitch Horowitz.
Corbet also suggested the project’s scale had not shrunk in the wake of “The Brutalist.” At the time, he said the new film was built around a 200-page script and a planned 50-day shoot, describing the production as “basically two, 25-day shoots for 100 pages.” That does not confirm a final runtime, obviously, but it does point to another large-canvas swing from a filmmaker who has shown little interest in modest comedowns.
Fassbender’s possible casting adds another heavyweight actor to the mix. The actor, who recently starred opposite Cate Blanchett in Steven Soderbergh’s spy drama “Black Bag,” has long moved between studio franchises, genre pieces, and filmmaker-driven projects. He will also appear in Na Hong-jin’s upcoming sci-fi thriller “Hope,” which premieres in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.
For Corbet, the news suggests the industry is still curious to see how far he can push after “The Brutalist.” That film’s success gave him the rare kind of leverage that usually disappears quickly in the current marketplace: a long, adult-oriented period drama that found critical heat, awards traction, and enough theatrical momentum to make a case for ambitious, director-led cinema.
Of course, the usual caveats apply. Fassbender is only in negotiations; a studio has not officially announced Gomez’s involvement, and the film’s title, distributor, production timeline, and release plan remain under wraps. But with Corbet coming off “The Brutalist,” and Fassbender now circling, his next film is becoming one of the more intriguing post-Oscar auteur projects in development.
No production or release date has been announced yet. [Variety]
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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