Multi-hyphenate creative Xavier Dolan has announced his next project: Matt & Max. The news was first reported by The Hollywood Reporter. Not even 30 years old, the award-winning French-Canadian actor-writer-director-producer-editor already has seven feature films under his belt. He burst into the scene in 2009 at the Cannes Film Festival with I Killed My Mother, taking home the SACD Price (Director’s Fortnight) and the Regards Jeune Prize. His It’s Only the End of the World (2016) starring an all-French cast, won the Cannes Grand Prix.
Dolan’s most recent film, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan, will be his English-language debut; the film will premiere later this year. Currently in post-production, the drama stars Jacob Tremblay (Wonder), Kit Harrington (Brimstone), Academy Award-nominated actress Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game), Academy Award-winning actresses Natalie Portman (Jackie), Kathy Bates (Bad Santa 2), and Susan Sarandon (A Bad Moms Christmas).
Matt & Max is a French-language film set in Quebec. Referring to two of his previous films, Dolan describes his next project as “a combination of Tom at the Farm, aesthetically, and Mommy in terms of energy and spirit.” The drama centers on two best friends falling in love who had never realized they could have a preference for men. Dolan described the film as “about true friendship and true love.” Dolan will play the titular Max. According to THR, Dolan hopes to cast Anne Dorval as Max’s mother; Dorval has played the role of mother on Dolan’s Mommy and I Killed My Mother.
Dolan was inspired by recent material tackling the topic of homosexuality maturely. He said, lately “I have been confronted with such mature material, like Boy Erased (which he will be acting in), Call Me by Your Name and God’s Own Country, and that gave me the desire to talk about homosexuality from an adult — and not a post-adolescent — point of view, and to talk about my generation and my friends and friendships.”
Dolan recently finalized the screenplay for Matt & Max, and he plans to shoot the film in the fall. Dolan is aiming for a 2019 premiere.
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