Reemerging after its Cannes Film Festival premiere — where we named it one of our favorites — Yorgos Lanthimos‘ English-language debut The Lobster has stopped by TIFF, NYFF, and more in the past few weeks. While Alchemy still has yet to set a U.S. release date (only word that it’ll arrive next spring), thanks to various international releases we have more previews from the film following the trailer.
Toplined by Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Ben Whishaw and John C. Reilly, it follows the peculiarly fascinating story in which singledom is banned and people are forced to find a match within 45 days or they turned into the animal of their choice. Today brings a new featurette in which the filmmakers and cast discuss the making of the project, a “music video,” which highlights a great deal of new photos, as well as some fresh stills. Also, if you’d like to see which animal you might want to turn into, one can take a quiz here.
We said in our review, “In this first half, The Lobster closely resembles Dogtooth and Lanthimos again exhibits his aptitude for creating insular, ruthlessly regimented microcosms through which to unleash his scathing satire. Unlike that of its predecessor, however, the attributes of this warped world are immediately familiar, even relatable. As a result, the director’s trademark deadpan humor is no longer simply droll, but uproarious – and also inescapably implicating. Lanthimos and his DP, Thimios Bakatakis (with whom he collaborated on Dogtooth and its predecessor Kinetta), render the hotel in a manner reminiscent of The Shining.”
Check out the featurette, music video, images, and character banners below, along with an excerpt of an interview Lanthimos recently gave to Criterion.
“I’m quite open, because even in the screenplays we don’t really describe the characters. Maybe their age if it’s important, but if it’s not we leave it as open as possible. I just think about the people that I’d like to work with, and whether they fit those roles and those characters. Something that’s very important for me—which is difficult for casting directors or producers—is that I need to cast one role at a time. I can’t cast the female and male lead at the same time, because the chemistry and the balance between them is very important. If one of them says yes and the other says no, then I just can’t be sure about the other choices. So that’s a bit of a longer process and annoys casting directors, because they want to have this brief of what the character is like, and I go, “It can be from Colin Farrell to . . . I don’t know.” I might like Colin Farrell, but I might not like someone you think is similar to Colin Farrell. It’s not about being like Colin Farrell. It’s the actual person I like.
Update: Videos removed at the request of Protagonist Pictures.
The Lobster will be released next year in the U.S. and on October 16th in the UK and Ireland.