NEON has announced today that Oscar-nominated filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer (“The Act of Killing”) is moving away from documentaries by tackling a fascinating new musical with some impressive cast members signing on. “The End,” his first dramatic work, will star Oscar-winner Tilda Swinton (“Suspira,” “The French Dispatch”), Stephen Graham (“Boardwalk Empire,” “The Irishman”), and George MacKay (“1917”).
Details on the project are scarce, but the actors will play the last human family, which would suggest a post-apocalypse setting, but what exactly that looks like or means plot-wise doesn’t seem to be terribly clear at this moment. Oppenheimer is best known for his fantastic documentary “The Act of Killing,” landing on The Playlist number-one spot on our list of The Best Documentaries of the 2010s.
A musical it’s an exciting choice for the filmmaker, and what the tone will be exactly is undoubtedly intriguing. NEON acquired the North American rights to “The End,” and the pic will begin production in 2022.
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The producing team will include Final Cut For Real’s Signe Byrge Sørensen, and Joshua Oppenheimer are producing with Wild Atlantic Pictures and Match Factory Productions co-producing the musical. The Match Factory will handle international sales and likely means there could be multiple distributors overseas.
The Danish Film Institute in Denmark and Film- und Medienstiftung NRW in Germany will support with financing.
Tilda Swinton recently worked with “Mad Max: Fury Road” director George Miller on the equally mysterious project “A Thousand Years of Longing” alongside actor Idris Elba (“The Suicide Squad”). The latter famously contracted COVID-19 during the film’s shoot in Australia and was one of the first actors who publicly documented their experience of overcoming the virus. Thankfully Elba recovered, and production has been completed.
Could “The End” be a straight but devastating ecological disaster like the bleak film “The Road,” robot uprising, or alien invasion? We certainly have questions that will need to be answered, but a genre musical by one of the most daring filmmakers on the planet has already intensely piqued our interest.