The wonderful world of Wes Anderson is as delicate as bone china. In his 2001 breakout hit The Royal Tenenbaums and 2014’s marvellous The Grand Budapest Hotel, the Anderson aesthetic is so precise, so perfect, you could put it on display. In fact, that actually happened in both London and Paris following the release of 2021’s The French Dispatch, with an exhibition showcasing the sets, costumes and props. The 56-year-old filmmaker even looks like he belongs to a bygone era – today at Cannes 2025, he’s wearing a blue-and-white striped jacket and pale green shirt.
Should there be a museum curation of Anderson’s latest movie The Phoenician Scheme, there’s plenty of stylistic objects to choose from. The fez worn by Mathieu Amalric. The basketball Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston and Riz Ahmed play with. The fake eyebrows and beard sported by Benedict Cumberbatch. Or, perhaps, the machine gun wielded by Richard Ayoade’s revolutionary (yes, you read that right). It’s an eclectic selection of paraphernalia that’s typically Anderson. But what you might not expect is that The Phoenician Scheme is a spy movie. Kind of.
“Espionage is maybe too strong a word,” starts Anderson. “Somebody recently said it was a thriller. Let’s not get people’s hopes up too much. We better not overstate it,” he smiles, talking to NME in his Marriott Hotel suite in Cannes where Phoenician is about to premiere in competition. “We get some thrills in there, but I can’t quite claim that we have a taut edge-of-your-seat experience. We’re doing something else. Hopefully that will be as good as a thriller, but there are definitely all kinds of ingredients from cinema [to it].”
The film starts in 1950 with an exploding airplane as dodgy tycoon Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro) survives an aerial assassination attempt. Amusingly, one poor soul’s legs are left behind, the rest of him blown apart, blood smeared on the aircraft interior. “Sometimes… I try to do an action thing,” Anderson says, almost sheepishly. “I have a fight with Benicio and Benedict in our movie. It’s got a lot of tricks and gags to it. What it doesn’t have is extremely dangerous stunts. There’s a limit!”
Still, it feels like an Anderson-inspired wry joke that The Phoenician Scheme arrives in cinemas this Friday, just two days after Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is released. They have Cruise, he’s got Hanks. You might call it classic counter programming but Anderson is actually a big admirer of the Mission: Impossible franchise. “With Tom Cruise doing the stunts…he really believes in these things,” he nods, with Cruise’s daring wire heist from the 1996 original his favourite. “How did he do that?”
“I’ll tell you where I’m going next: England” – Wes Anderson
When Anderson does a spy movie, it’s more like a film from the Golden Age of Hollywood. The cine-literate director, who co-wrote the script with his good buddy Roman Coppola, loves those old movies, the sort where Jean Gabin or Lino Ventura can be seen pressing a button under their desk in a nightclub to open a secure door. “I have never seen anything to do with that on any level, in real life. I’ve only seen it exist in movies. And I love that.”
Really though, The Phoenician Scheme is a father-daughter story. Korda, fearing for his life, decides to leave his estate to his estranged offspring, a devout nun named Liesl. Like Coppola, Anderson has a daughter, Freya, born in 2016, with his Lebanese writer and costume designer wife, Juman Malouf. “I’m sure it was because we knew this dynamic, which is why our brains told us to take it this way. We started using the details of our experience and the feelings around that relationship [to inspire The Phoenician Scheme].”
Playing Liesl is 24-year-old Mia Threapleton, who happens to be the daughter of British star Kate Winslet. Anderson didn’t know this fact when he saw Threapleton’s audition tape. It was only when he played it back, he recognised the offscreen voice helping the young star read her lines. “I realised that it was Kate Winslet doing a bit of a Cockney accent, probably just to disguise her voice and pretending to be a casting director. And then I thought, ‘Oh, I bet they worked on the scene together, and she’s been directed by Kate Winslet.’”
Threapleton’s star will certainly rise after her confident showing in The Phoenician Scheme, but Anderson also gathers a tremendous cast around her. His old pal Bill Murray plays God (in a bizarre segment that also features Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg). Superbad’s Michael Cera, another Anderson debutante, is a tutor and “lover of insects” named Bjorn. As Korda tries to find investors for a madcap infrastructure scheme, everyone from Riz Ahmed (as a Middle Eastern prince) to Scarlett Johansson (as a gingham-wearing cousin) pops up.
There’s even a curious basketball sequence which sees Korda take on the characters played by Ahmed, Hanks and Cranston. “Interestingly, Benicio’s character is not very good in the scene but he was the best player on the set.” This will come as no surprise, given the athletic-looking Puerto Rican star stands at 6ft 1in. If there are shots where you don’t actually see who’s nailing the throw, “Benicio was the one who was actually sinking them.”
Famously, Anderson likes to bond with his cast, echoing the themes of family that run through his films like a railway track. “Part of my whole approach is that we all essentially live on the set,” he explains. This time everyone resided in Potsdam, close to the famous Studio Babelsberg, where the film was shot and which has housed many other classic movie productions. Sadly, Anderson and co. didn’t have much time to visit the nearby party city of Berlin, but the director managed to sneak away for some location scouting. “When we did that, we’d go to my favourite place, Curry 36, which serves currywurst sausages. It’s the best.”
As niche as his films can be, Anderson’s loyal fanbase means he can make films his way. It’s a rarity in today’s Hollywood. Sometimes they hit big. The Grand Budapest Hotel took $174million worldwide while his recent Netflix anthology The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023), a take on short stories by Roald Dahl, won him his first Oscar, for Best Live Action Short Film.
The Phoenician Scheme is his 13th feature-length project. When we ask where Anderson imagines his career going next, he’s a little coy. With six previous collaborations with Roman Coppola, does he and his chum not have a drawer stuffed full of unmade scripts ready to go? “I never have that,” he says. “I’ll give you a tiny bit of information that I haven’t revealed. I’ll tell you where I’m going next: England. Yes, that’s the only information… I’ve decided in this moment to share.”
Anderson is no stranger to our fair isle. His animated films, Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and Isle of Dogs (2018) were crafted in the UK, while Henry Sugar was shot at Maidstone Studios in Kent. Certainly, there’s something very English about Anderson’s sensibility, whose second movie, 1998’s Rushmore was soundtracked by British Invasion bands such as The Kinks. The good news is, he notes, it’ll be a project with Coppola and our own Ayoade. A remake of The IT Crowd? Now that would be something.
‘The Phoenician Scheme’ is in cinemas from May 23