Eddington: Ari Aster’s next film will be a contemporary western that takes place during the pandemic

Ari Aster is carving out a nice little niche spot for himself in the film community. He came in hot with great confidence with his debut film Hereditary, then aimed to make a haunting horror movie in an unconventionally sunny, warm setting with Midsommar. Recently, Aster was thankful that the studio A24 was “stupid enough” to let him make an abstract dark comedy like Beau is Afraid without much interference. The unique voice of Aster has given him carte blanche, so now he is able to go back to a past idea that he initially thought would be his debut film.

According to World of Reel, Aster gave an interview in the Italian publication La Reppublica, where he revealed details about the next project he hopes to work on. The project of Eddington was something he had been developing for a while. Eddington is a contemporary western that is set in a fictional copper mining town in New Mexico and will be taking place during the pandemic. Pawel Pogorzelski, Aster’s frequent collaborating cinematographer, had mentioned that the production is set to start this summer.

Aster had actually spoken about this project years before when the director participated in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit. The Beau is Afraid filmmaker explained, “There was a period of time when I thought Midsommar would be the debut feature, and there was a period when I thought another script called Eddington might be the first movie. For like five years, I was trying to get that Western-noir dark ensemble comedy going. That won’t be the next one, by the way, though I do still want to make it very badly. I made Hereditary first, but I always had Midsommar in my back pocket, like it was right there in me.”

He continues, “Although it’s sort of a – I don’t know if you’d call it a revisionist western. It’s contemporary; one foot is in the western and one foot is even more heavily in the noir genre. So it’s like a film noir ensemble western dark comedy.” The Hereditary director dabbles in certain dark comedic elements in his films, with Beau is Afraid amping up the madness, and it seems he will be continuing to do so with Eddington. Although he admittedly had this concept in mind for a few years, he alludes in the La Reppublica interview that he has added the recent events of the pandemic into the plot. It hasn’t been officially announced, but given his history with the studio, it can be assumed that A24 will also be behind this project with him.