Visionary director Wes Anderson is back with another whimsical take on his signature cinematic worldview with The Phoenician Scheme, which just released its first official trailer. Benicio del Toro plays a wealthy and eccentric arms dealer who survives six plane crashes and forsakes his nine sons to gift his family empire to his only daughter, Liesl, a knife-wielding nun played by Mia Threapleton.
“Today, tonight and tomorrow, we rendezvous with every titan and pretend we agree what we already agreed. But, in fact, we don’t. We can’t,” Zsa-zsa Korda (del Toro) says in the teaser for Anderson’s latest bone-dry comedy as he attempts to steer the future of his family business and repair his relationship with his estranged daughter.
Anderson—who is renowned for having a consistent visual style across his filmography— told Variety in 2023 that “the one thing I never think about, really, when I’m making a film is myself or my own style, my voice. I think about what’s new for this movie, how do I make this movie the best it can be, how do I get the greatest collaborators together. And yet every time I make a movie, the first thing people say is: ‘You can sure tell who made this one!’”
Other cast members include Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Riz Ahmed, Hope Davis and Michael Cera, several of whom have worked with the filmmaker before. Anderson wrote the script for his 13th film from a story he penned with frequent collaborator Roman Coppola. The film, which was shot in Germany, is the third team-up with Anderson, Indian Paintbrush and Focus Features, which also released Asteroid City (2023) and Moonrise Kingdom (2012). Anderson won his first Oscar for the short film, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, in 2024.
Focus Features set a limited May 30 release for The Phoenician Scheme ahead of an expanded wide release on June 6. Watch the trailer below.
