Wes Anderson Has Made a Crime Movie! Possibly!
"The Phoenician Scheme" is an espionate/heist comedy... we think.
Ahoy! I am always excited when I hear there’s a new Wes Anderson movie about to hit theaters. I love Anderson’s visually and thematically meticulous, intricate films. It’s been posited, on this site, that all of Anderson’s movies borrow elements from crime movies, and I agree. But this time, he seems to be coming out with a bonafide crime movie. He seems to be. Who knows. With Anderson, inside-outs genre so brilliantly that it’s hard to tell what anything will be before actually seeing it. Remember how Asteroid City wasn’t a sci-fi movie, as it seemed to be, but a mediation on theater and unknowability?
This new film is called The Phoenician Scheme, which is a great title, and it releases in theaters on May 30th, 2025. So, we’ll know soon what it’s all about. It seems to be about a tycoon and his daughter (who is a nun) and the adventure they embark on. IMDb calls it “The story of a family and a family business.” Could mean anything.
Until then… there’s a trailer.
Olivia Rutigliano
Olivia Rutigliano is an Editor at Lit Hub and CrimeReads. Her other work appears in Vanity Fair, Vulture, Lapham's Quarterly, AirMail, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Books, The Baffler, Bright Wall/Dark Room, Politics/Letters, The Toast, Truly Adventurous, and elsewhere. She has a PhD from the departments of English/comparative literature and theatre at Columbia University, where she was the Marion E. Ponsford fellow. She hosts the podcasst "Culture Schlock" at Lit Hub Radio. She is on instagram at @oldebean, twitter at @oldrutigliano, and bluesky at @oliviarutigliano.bsky.social.
