Cate Blanchett and Selena Gomez Are Joining One of the Most Audacious Films in Development Right Now
Brady Corbet has never been interested in making things easy. The writer-director who spent six years crafting a three-and-a-half-hour immigrant epic on a shoestring budget and then watched it collect armfuls of awards has already proven he operates on a completely different wavelength than most working filmmakers. Now, with the dust barely settled on his awards run, Corbet is charging headfirst into something even more ambitious, and the cast he is assembling is turning heads across the industry.
‘The Brutalist’ earned ten Oscar nominations and took home three, including Best Actor for Adrien Brody. That kind of late-breaking, word-of-mouth triumph has a way of opening doors, and Corbet appears to be walking through all of them at once. His fourth feature, tentatively titled ‘The Origin of the World,’ is described as a Western-inflected epic that will tackle Northern California immigration and span 150 years, though it is predominantly focused on the 1970s.
The casting news that has sent the film world into a frenzy arrived this weekend. During a masterclass at the Cannes Film Festival, Cate Blanchett let slip that she is “about to work with Brady Corbet on a film,” and Variety subsequently confirmed she has been cast in the project, with Selena Gomez also starring alongside Michael Fassbender. The InSneider had previously reported Gomez’s involvement, but Blanchett’s candid Cannes moment turned the project’s growing ensemble into unmissable news.
The film itself sounds unlike anything currently in production. Corbet has described it as “really, really genre-defying,” telling the Hollywood Reporter that its story moves from the 19th century into the present day while remaining anchored in the seventies. Speaking to Deadline, he elaborated that the project is “sort of about American mysticism and the history of the occult in America,” and that he has been reading extensively about the migration of cultist belief systems while collaborating with occult historian Mitch Horowitz. The script runs to 200 pages, the shoot is planned across Portugal and South Africa, and Corbet has confirmed the film will be X-rated and run approximately four hours in length, shot on rare eight-perf 65mm cameras.
Blanchett, a two-time Oscar winner, has collaborated with filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, David Fincher, and Wes Anderson, and most recently starred in Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Father Mother Sister Brother,’ which won the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival. Gomez, in addition to her career as a global pop star and founder of Rare Beauty, broke out dramatically with Harmony Korine’s 2012 film ‘Spring Breakers’ and most recently earned awards attention for ‘Emilia Pérez.’
Composer Daniel Blumberg, who won the Oscar for his score on ‘The Brutalist,’ is already confirmed to return for ‘The Origin of the World.’ Production is expected to begin this summer, with some observers already positioning the project as a potential Venice 2027 contender. A24, which handled ‘The Brutalist,’ would be considered the logical distributor, though no studio attachment has been announced.
Whether Corbet can deliver another impossible swing is the question the entire film world is now quietly asking itself. Given what he has already proven, dismissing him seems unwise. Are you excited to see Blanchett and Gomez share the screen in what could be the most brazenly ambitious arthouse project of the decade?
