Steven Soderbergh doesn’t have much of an off switch. He tried to take a sabbatical in the summer of 2013 following Cannes and that “vacation” turned into directing every episode of “The Knick” for Cinemax a few months later. Time off just wouldn’t take. Now, with the world premiere of his latest film, “The Laundromat” set to screen at the Venice Film Festival in two weeks, the filmmaker is taking some much-needed downtime… by shooting a secret new film called “Let Them All Talk.”
Most details are being kept under wraps, but sources close to the project tell us the movie features his ‘Laundromat’ star (and Oscar royalty) Meryl Streep and Gemma Chan from “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Captain Marvel” and Marvel‘s upcoming “The Eternals.” Soderbergh had been hinting at working on something new on Twitter and revealed the title of the film yesterday. Sources have confirmed to us that the project is indeed Soderbergh’s next feature-length narrative movie. One feature of the film is that it’s being shot on the brand-spanking-new RED Komodo Dragoncamera, a state-of-the-art digital RED camera meant to be the new platinum standard for digital cameras. As Soderbergh has already suggested on Twitter, along with Jarred Land, the President of RED DIGITAL CINEMA, the Komodo Dragon is hot off the press and was just made production-ready at the last minute after some 11th hour troubleshooting (Land just posted an Instagram story about getting the camera ready with 48 hours notice, see below).
Soderbergh was a test guinea pig for the RED ONE cameras on his two-part “Che” movies in 2008 and he’s opted to be the patient zero test case subject again for “Let Them All Talk.” The Komodo cameras are also expected to be used for David Fincher‘s upcoming “Mank” film for Netflix starringGary Oldman.
Soderbergh had intended to finish the film and then take it out to market, but the word is out and various studios and streaming platforms—some that haven’t even launched yet—are already getting their checkbooks out and readying for the bidding war. Netflix, who is putting out “The Laundromat” in the fall, and released Soderbergh’s previous 2019 film, “High Flying Bird,” is definitely expected to be one of the bidders.
“Let Them All Talk” is currently shooting in New York as we speak and don’t’ be surprised if paparazzi photos of Streep and Chan surface later today. The film will shoot for a few days in NYC first this week—with RED folks on standby—before whisking away to a remote location outside the U.S. where no one will be available to do service work on the camera at all. Here’s hoping everyone stays dry overseas.
