Guy Maddin's The Confessions Lands Schafer, Skarsgård, Hawke, Melling

Guy Maddin will direct The Confessions, a feature billed as "a cautionary psycho-dramedy," with Hunter Schafer, Maya Hawke, Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling attached to star. Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen's Square Peg, which backed Maddin's Rumours (2024), returns to produce the Canadian director's next film, Variety reports.

The project arrives just two years after Rummins—no, after Rumours, co-directed with Evan and Galen Johnson, Maddin's now-regular collaborators. The logline, such as it is, concerns "a group of condemned nuns bearing witness to the accursed, globe-spanning love triangle of a missing sea captain and his poet wife."

Aster has already praised the screenplay, calling it "as singular and beguiling as anything they've ever written." Maddin, never one for understatement, described the film as "part religio-maritime rough-music psychomachy, part hallucinated saltwater shaming parade" and claimed it is "already several steps ahead of the Bible" on the strength of its cast. No start date, financier beyond Square Peg, or distributor has been announced.

What else is moving in film?

Three other developments surfaced in the same reporting cycle:

• Steven Spielberg's western appears to be accelerating. Cinematographer Janusz Kamiński told The Hollywood Reporter the project will shoot next year. He praised the Sudeten Mountains' hills, snow and fog—terrain that has rarely hurt the genre. The film's title and plot remain unconfirmed.
• Spielberg's possible stage debut. The New York Post reports Spielberg could direct his first stage production: a musical written by Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesori, proposed for the Public Theater in the 2027-2028 season. No subject has been confirmed; an unverified rumor suggests it is Christmas-related.
• Kleber Mendonça Filho and Wagner Moura may reunite. Their new project, Foreign Correspondent, would examine events leading up to World War II from Mendonça Filho's native Recife, Brazil, including the communist uprising of 1935 and the rise of President Getúlio Vargas, who led the country amid Nazi aggression. Dark Horizons reports the director already has 14 books on his reading list—a hint of the density that characterized his recent The Secret Agent.

Herzog turns a 28-year walk into a film

Werner Herzog has been documenting Karl Bushby, the British adventurer who has spent 28 years walking, swimming and crossing 31,000 miles across the planet. According to Asharq Al-Awsat, Bushby's homecoming will include reuniting with his mother and 36-year-old son and meeting his 12-year-old granddaughter for the first time.

The project has been percolating for most of the journey: a production company has provided "financial and logistical assistance" to Bushby for 16 years. If the man seemed like a Herzog character all along, that impression is about to become literal.

What does this change for audiences?

For Maddin's audience, the Square Peg reunion plus a cast of this profile suggests his most visible release in years—though casting announcements and shooting schedules are different things, and none of these projects has a confirmed release date. The Spielberg items are the most speculative: Kamiński's shooting window is the only claim attached to a named source, while the Kushner-Tesori musical rests on a single report and an unverified rumor.