‘The Phoenician Scheme’: Wes Anderson’s Latest Goes To Focus For May Release & Probable Cannes Debut

Writer/director Wes Anderson has been working at such a pace that he’s been putting out new material often, and he already has a new film heading to theaters this May. Focus Features has announced that they are releasing his latest movie in theaters, as “The Phoenician Scheme” will be distributed domestically by the Universal-owned shingle on May 30 in limited release and going wide on June 6.

Referred to as “a story of a family and a family business,” the script was co-written by Anderson and longtime collaborator Roman Coppola (“The Darjeeling Limited,” “Moonrise Kingdom”). We’ll see “The Phoenician Scheme” (filmed primarily outside of Berlin, Germany, at Studio Babelsberg) explore a father-daughter relationship in a dark espionage tale.

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Folks taking on the trio of lead roles in “The Phoenician Scheme” include Benicio del Toro (“The French Dispatch”) as Zsa-Zsa Korda, one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Mia Threapleton as Sister Liesl (Korda’s daughter, who is a nun), and Michael Cera as Bjorn Lund, their tutor.

The impressive cast assembled, an Anderson calling card, also features the likes of Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, and Benedict Cumberbatch.

This will be the third Anderson pic that Focus has handled, and this announcement could be quietly telegraphing that the film will likely premiere at Cannes in France, where the filmmaker is a huge favorite of the organizers and a festival’s mainstay.

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Anderson’s relationship with Focus could signal that he’s slowly drifting away from working with Searchlight Pictures, which had been his distributor for decades (going back to “The Darjeeling Limited”) but has since pivoted to Focus/Universal (having worked with them on “Moonrise Kingdom”) as they released his most recent feature, “Astroid City.”