Jesse Eisenberg is already confirmed for his third directorial feature, and this time, he’s swapping dramedy for a full-on musical comedy, just in time for IndieWire’s Musicals Week.
The yet-untitled project reunites writer/director Eisenberg with Julianne Moore, who starred in his debut feature “When You Finish Saving the World.” The film will also be Eisenberg’s third with Emma Stone, Dave McCary, and Ali Herting’s Fruit Tree production banner.
Moore is set to star as a shy woman who is unexpectedly cast in a local production of an original musical, according to the logline. “Under the spell of the strong-willed and enigmatic director (Paul Giamatti), she loses herself in the role and the high-stakes world of this community theater production.”
Eisenberg’s “A Real Pain” recently debuted in theaters on November 1. Eisenberg co-starred in his sophomore film alongside Kieran Culkin; the duo play a pair of cousins who travel through Poland in honor of their late grandmother. The feature debuted at Sundance 2024, where Eisenberg won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
Eisenberg recently said during IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast that he has learned how to fully bring more well-rounded characters from the page to the screen as a writer/director across his two features thus far.
“I was like, ‘Oh, okay, the audiences are not in my head,’ so I have to make the extra effort to at least indicate who’s good, who’s bad, who are we listening to, who are we following,” Eisenberg said of learning from his debut “When You Finish Saving the World.” “Even if that means that [the characters] are doing something transgressive, even if that means the characters are doing something distasteful, still [I just need] to ground it in, ‘What are we watching here? What are the rules of this world?’ And maybe I didn’t do that well enough.”
He continued of follow-up “A Real Pain,” “So with this movie, I really was just trying to make sure we know who these people are, in a kind of familiar way, in a way that’s accessible, and making sure we know that even during their moments of bad behavior, they’re feeling something.”
For Eisenberg’s third film, he developed the project with Fruit Tree and Topic Studios, which is fully financing it. Production is set to begin in early 2025. Eisenberg will direct from his own script; he is also contributing original music to the film.
CAA Media Finance and WME Independent are handling distribution rights.
“The Holdovers” actor Giamatti has been on a casting streak post-second Oscar nomination. He will appear in Eli Roth’s “Hostel” series as well as “Black Mirror” Season 7, “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy,” and the third “Downton Abbey” film.
Moore co-leads Tilda Swinton in Sony Pictures Classics’ drama Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” alongside Tilda Swinton. The film will be released December 20 in theaters.
Deadline first reported the project.
