It’s a “Hamnet” reunion! Paul Mescal and newly-minted Oscar winner for “Hamnet” Jessie Buckley are set to star together yet again, this time for a new film from “Beasts of the Southern Wild” director Benh Zeitlin, according to reports in Variety and Deadline.
The film is called “Hold on to Your Angels,” and it is Zeitlin’s first feature in six years since 2020’s “Wendy.” It’s set in Louisiana and is about “a hell-bound outlaw (Mescal) and a ferocious shepherd of lost souls (Buckley) who fall in catastrophic love as their crumbling bayou paradise drags them under,” per the film’s logline before the package heads to the Cannes Marché du Film.
Zeitlin also wrote the screenplay, and in a statement (which you can below) he said that the story has been percolating in his head dating as far back as “Beasts of the Southern Wild” 17 years ago. He said the film’s hero is Pam Harper, who played Little Jo in “Beasts.”
Brad Pitt’s Plan B is producing the film, as is “Anora” producer Alex Coco via his Rapt Film. The film is being launched as a package on the Cannes Marché du Film, with The Veterans repping international sales rights and CAA Media Finance handling domestic.
“’Hold on to Your Angels’ is the most impossible love story I’ve ever witnessed — an outlaw romance for the end of America, set on the crumbling edge of South Louisiana. I’ve been dreaming of telling it since its hero, Pam Harper, walked into an audition for ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’ 17 years ago. It’s a love letter to an endangered way of life — and a rallying cry for empathy across a fractured planet”, said Zeitlin.
“Benh Zeitlin absolutely stunned us and the world at large with the cosmic sorcery of ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild.’ With ‘Hold on to Your Angels,’ Benh has set his powerful mix of intense realism, myth, and magic against the large scale of an epic love story. This is a writer/director with a vision for the ages and we could not be more proud to be by his side to make this film with Jessie and Paul,” Plan B said in a statement.
“After years of working with filmmakers that explore the overlooked corners of our world, I can recognize Benh Zeitlin as a filmmaker with that rare gift: the ability to reveal profound beauty and humanity in parts of America that seldom find their way onto the silver screen,” Coco said in a statement.
Buckley is currently filming Alice Rohrwacher’s “Three Incestuous Sisters” alongside Dakota Johnson, Josh O’Connor, Saoirse Ronan, and Isabella Rossellini in her first post-Oscar role, and she was just seen earlier this year in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride.” Mescal is currently filming the four “Beatles” biopics, in which he plays Paul McCartney.
The Cannes market kicks off next week, starting on May 12.
