Planted by Joaquin Phoenix, Todd Haynes hopes to “resurrect” his gay film

The director of Carol is not giving up, even if for the moment, his project is at a standstill.

Invited to participate in one of the Conversations of filmmakers organized as part of the Marrakech international film festival, Todd Haynes spoke briefly about his aborted project earlier this year. The director of Carol and of May, December had to turn a gay romancein the 1930s, with Joaquin Phoenix (Joker: Folie à deux) And Danny Ramirez (Captain America 4). Except that five days before filming, at the beginning of August, bad luck! The film fell through following the withdrawal of its main actor. Who had nevertheless initiated the project, Phoenix having proposed to Haynes to work on this daring gay romance, and not the other way around.

“What happened this summer was difficult, declared the American filmmaker to the audience of the Marrakech festival, relayed by Variety. But the film and the screenplay could well be resurrected in a different form one day…”

Is there a Joaquin Phoenix problem in Hollywood?

All would therefore not be lost for this Haynes project, despite this sudden departure which put the entire team out of work, to the great dismay of its producer Christine Vachon, at the head of Killer Films, who did not mince her words back to school about Phoenix:

“Yes, a version of this happened. And it’s a nightmare,” she wrote on X before deleting her message a few hours later. Regarding this choice of actor who does not have the same sexuality as her character, she adds: “If you are tempted to criticize this, tell us: 'This is what you get when you cast a straight guy in a gay role'DON'T DO IT. It was HIS project, he brought it to US. And Killer's history with LGBTQ actors/directors/crew members speaks for us. (And to everyone who has already spoken without knowing: you are making this terrible situation even more difficult).”

“The thing is, everything that needed to be said about what happened has been said, she continued. If I had any gossip, I'd tell you, but I don't have anything. Simply, it was tragic. The worst thing for me is that Todd Haynes is 62 years old. This means that he will still be able to make a limited number of films between now and the end of his life. This is the most tragic, I find, because I consider him one of the most extraordinary artists of our generation.”

“The idea that he wasted his time like that… when he had been working with Joaquin for years, that's the tragedy for me. Which I don't accept. As a cultural community, we lost an opportunity to see a new Todd Haynes film. It's criminal.

May December: Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore's acting lesson [critique]