British up-and-coming actor Josh O’Connor has two movies screening at the Cannes Film Festival, with the art heist flick “The Mastermind” from director Kelly Reichardt and co-stars with Paul Mescal in Oliver Hermanus’ “History of Sound.” In a new interview with Deadline, he sadly revealed he has exited the gestating new Luca Guadagnino film “Separate Rooms.”
After working with the Italian filmmaker on the sexy sports dramedy “Challengers,” O’Connor was attached to “Separate Rooms” in 2024, which is an adaptation of Pier Vittorio Tondelli‘s novel of the same name, that follows an Italian writer named Leo grieving after the death of his boyfriend.
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“Unfortunately, not. Luca’s working all the time. He’s such a busy bee and rightly so. We’re constantly talking. He may well do it, but unfortunately, it won’t be with me,” the actor told Deadline when asked about his participation in the Guadagnino drama.
We don’t know who is replacing O’Connor or if the project is in conflict with other films Guadagnino is working on, such as a remake of “American Psycho” at Lionsgate and had been working on a “Sgt. Rock” movie before that fell apart (reports stating it has been scrapped). Only time will tell what is going on with “Separate Rooms” and if it has more problems than just losing an actor.
That interview took place on the set of Steven Spielberg‘s untitled project, which sees O’Connor co-starring alongside Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson, and Emily Blunt. While O’Connor wasn’t dropping huge spoilers of the sci-fi movie, he called it “old school Spielberg” by comparing it to other previous alien-related efforts, such as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T.” as examples.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll say. It’s like old-school Spielberg. I think people will be excited…’Close Encounters,’ ‘E.T.’; that world,” O’Connor said of the new Spielberg movie.
Many will be aware that the actor previously linked up with Spielberg for his WWII pilot drama series “Masters of The Air” that aired on Apple TV+ before securing a role in this new film.
Universal Pictures is set to release the untitled Spielberg movie on June 12, 2026. That date certainly gives us the impression it’ll be another huge sci-fi blockbuster, and we hopefully won’t have to wait too long to learn more about it.
