Jesse Eisenberg Returns As Writer-Director

Chances are, if you watched A Real Pain, you’ve been waiting for the next film from Jesse Eisenberg (as writer-director). If you watched The Holdovers, you’ve been waiting for the next film starring Paul Giamatti as a cantankerous oddball. And if you watched, May December – or, literally anything she’s done – you’re always on the lookout for the next great Julianne Moore movie. Good news! All three of those are the same project: The Debut, the latest film written and directed by Eisenberg, starring both Giamatti and Moore in a tale of local theatre that dredges up real dramatics among all the am-dram. Check out the trailer here:

The film stars Moore as a woman seizes her chance to join a theatre production, but finds herself terrorised by Paul Giamatti’s irascible director, with a bit of a Whiplash energetic. And in the course of channeling all of her rage into the role, it seems Moore’s character taps something inside herself that’s been lying in wait, unleashing her frustrations in her home life into a work of art. (Hey, this is starting to sound like classic Simpsons episode ‘A Streetcar Named Marge’.) Intriguingly, it seems the film is a musical too, of sorts, with Eisenberg also credited for ‘music and lyrics’. Will that be the musical Giamatti is staging within the film? Or will the film blur its formal lines and have its actual characters break into song? Eisenberg also stars in the film, alongside Havana Rose Liu, Halle Bailey, and musical royalty Bernadette Peters.

Will Eisenberg’s latest measure up to the awards-worthy brilliance of A Real Pain? Are we in for a great musical soundtrack? And just how similar will The Debut be to ‘A Streetcar Named Marge’? We’ll find out when The Debut debuts later this year.