Underplayed Gems

The Phoenician Scheme (2025)

The Phoenician Scheme poster
Directed by
Wes Anderson
Genre
adventure film, spy film, thriller film, black comedy film
Country
United States
Runtime
1h 45m
Rated
PG-13
Rating
6.5 of 10 from 956 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
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How it feels

A ruthless businessman tries to make things right with his estranged daughter while overseeing a big construction project in an ancient region. The story mixes family drama with espionage and dark comedy.

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What happens

The Phoenician Scheme is a 2025 black comedy espionage thriller film written, produced, and directed by Wes Anderson from a story he conceived with Roman Coppola. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, F. Murray Abraham, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Willem Dafoe, and Bill Murray. It tells the story of a ruthless businessman (del Toro) as he seeks to reconcile with his estranged daughter (Threapleton) and complete an ambitious infrastructure project in Phoenicia. The film was produced internationally between the United States and Germany by Anderson's company American Empirical Pictures and Steven Rales's company Indian Paintbrush. Anderson talked about the film in June 2023 while promoting Asteroid City; he said it had already been written before the 2023 WGA strike began. That September, he revealed that del Toro and Cera were planned to join the cast, and he hoped to begin filming soon after the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike ended. The rest of the cast signed on between January and June 2024. Filming took place at Babelsberg Studio in Germany, between March and June 2024, with cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. Frequent Anderson collaborator Alexandre Desplat returned to compose the score. The Phoenician Scheme had its world premiere in the main competition of the Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2025, and was released theatrically in Germany by Universal Pictures on May 29, 2025, and in the United States by Focus Features on May 30, 2025. The film received generally positive reviews. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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