Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund of “Triangle of Sadness,” “The Square,” and “Force Majeure” has been one of the biggest voices in well-crafted satire/dark humor and his latest feature effort “The Entertainment System Is Down” is expected to keep focused on character-driven fodder with quirky dynamics of those in relationships alongside strangers, as the director is now sharing more information about his next film that has an impressive lineup of talent playing roles such as Kirsten Dunst, Keanu Reeves, Daniel Brühl, Samantha Morton, Nicholas Braun, Tobias Menzies, and more.
Speaking at Slano Film Days 2026 in Croatia (via Screen Daily), has dished some new details about the movie, which focuses on a group on an airplane in flight and ends up in a plane crash, somewhat mirroring the events of “Triangle of Sadness,” where a luxury cruise liner goes under, and the survivors attempt to keep themselves alive with the class system being completely thrown out the window. The value of wealth goes out the window, and what is prized is being the one who can hunt, fish, cook, collect drinking water, and build shelter.
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One factor that is going on with the new film is that the plane is going to have a bunch of rowdy Aussie cricket fans on the plane (on a long-haul flight heading from London to Sydney after their team has loses their match), and is said to be loosely inspired by “real-life Australian cricketer David Boon, who is said to have consumed 52 cans of beer during a flight from Australia to England in 1989,” alongside the director’s own observations of various Australian men over the years while in Majorca, where his holiday home resides. “They have a very friendly, warm atmosphere. At the same time, they are very manly,” Östlund said. “I watched a little [cricket]. It’s an interesting sport because it has an upper-class vibe to it.”
That certainly sounds interesting, and what that group dynamic looks like after the plane crash (where the plane crashes could have an impact on the storytelling, too) will likely spark more of the meat of the film: do they work well with others, or are we looking at an adult version of “Lord of the Flies“? We’ll have to be patient to see what that will look like in a trailer, but that may be reliant on the pic securing a distributor in North America and the United Kingdom.
We cannot wait to see some footage from “The Entertainment System Is Down,” but it’s unclear when/where the movie will officially debut. Many suspect that it will be part of the competition lineup for the Cannes Film Festival next year, which we assume is a really good bet to make.
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
