Kirsten Dunst and Daniel Brühl with double award-winning director Ruben Östlund
They join Keanu Reeves aboard the malfunctioning plane from The Entertainment System is Down.
Awarded two Palmes d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for The Square and Without Filter, Ruben Ostlund is known for his sordid and comic satires around the bourgeoisie, consumer society, vanity – and soon around screen society with The Entertainment System is Down. And after hiring the star of John WickKeanu Reeves, it's now around Kirsten Dunst (Civil War) And Daniel Brühl (Nothing new in the West, Captain America: Civil War, Lagerfeld) to join this incredible adventure.
Keanu Reeves drops the guns for Ruben Östlund
The Swedish filmmaker already told us about the story in an interview last year:
“It happens on a very long-haul flight, and shortly after takeoff, the passengers learn to their horror that the video system doesn't work. I wanted to find a framework that would allow me to analyze what smartphones have done to us do.”
The Entertainment System is Down was not entirely born from Östlund's imagination, but was inspired by a psychological study conducted by the University of Virginia: “The Challenge Of the Disengaged Mind.” The results showed that participants couldn't stand the idea of spending six to fifteen minutes in a room doing nothing but thinking. When a button was added to the room which, when pressed, released a painful but harmless shock, ¼ of the women and 2/3 of the men chose to receive the shock. One of the participants even found the time so long that he pressed the button 190 times. We understand what the Swede found in this study.
Although the project is still in its early stages, it is coming to fruition more and more. To stage this new satire, the director saw things big (or even very big). According to Deadline, Östlund has purchased a Boeing 747 which is no longer in service and wishes to film it in its entirety in the studio. Megalomania !
Filming is scheduled for early 2025.
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