Matthias Schoenaerts Four Times

Until the Supergirl trailer dropped a couple of weeks ago I had totally spaced on the fact that our fave Belgian beefcake Matthias Schoenaerts had been cast as the bad guy in it (or at least one of them anyway) -- but there he was! Looking kind of goofy with a face popping with metal spikes, sure, but it made me excited for the movie anyway, even as I couldn't give a shit about it otherwise. So good work, James Gunn -- you gauranteed at least one extra ticket with that casting. That's like 20 bucks! (Unless I go to a press screening, in which case it's zero bucks.) And then a couple weeks before that we'd heard that Matty is going to star in a thriller opposite Halle Berry -- basically we're happy that he's popping up, metal spikes in his face or whatever, as it's felt like a little bit of a dry spell for those of us who adore him. And now (via) we've got a photoshoot to boot! Okay maybe it's not the most thrilling photoshoot but it's a photoshoot, hence me calling it "a photoshoot" in the previous sentence, and we'll take it. So hit the jump for the rest of the "photoshoot"... 

Let's Hear It For the Schoenaerts

Since the last Matthias Schoenaerts news I'd heard before this morning was decidedly not great -- he got in legal trouble last year for allegedly driving drunk -- we're going to seize onto this more positive news because we're really rooting for the big lug to turn his shit around. This is all Terrence Malick's fault -- if Malick would just finish his damn Jesus movie The Way of the Wind Matty (who's playing Peter) would have some career momentum again. As is it's only been the terrible terrible terrible sequel to The Old Guard (and how fucking bizarre that I have just had to mention that movie two posts in a row) that Schoenaerts has had come out since The Regime, his super-fun and under-appreciated fascism-comedy with Kate Winslet. There are several other projects in his "upcoming" slate -- I talked about a couple last May right here -- but today there's headline-at-Deadline news on another one and we love to see it. Even if... well movies headlined by Halle Berry aren't exactly burning up the box office in 2026. There is a big plus in the plus column on this project though -- it's being written and directed by Ellie Foumbi, who made the fan-fucking-tastic French horror movie Our Father, the Devil in 2021. This would be her follow-up to that. Anyway I should probably get to what "this" is, huh? Here's how Deadline describes it:

"Matthias Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone), Makita Samba (Paris, 13th District) and Marton Csokas (The Equalizer) have joined Halle Berry in Fleur as filming begins in Paris this week. Berry stars as a New York housewife who flees the U.S. and her husband of thirty years (Csokas) to reinvent herself in Paris as Fleur, an upscale escort and dominatrix carving out her own power and identity. As her past collides with her new life, the question isn’t just whether she’ll return, but whether she can."

Good Morning, Waël

This Friday we're grabbing onto a newcomer for dear life -- his name is Waël Sersoub and he's actually been making movies for a decade. He was apparently in Michael Haneke's Happy End!  I really need to re-watch Happy End. Anyway on Insta I follow the photographer who took that picture and I one hundred percent thought it was a photo of former canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at first -- you can see the resemblance right? And yes it seemed like a big leap in Trudeau's career to suddenly be taking beefcake photos but hey he is dating Katy Perry right now. Who knows? The world works in mysterious, horny ways. Anyway it's not the former Prime Minister of our upper neighbor, it's a French model-turned-actor who I recommend looking up -- he pretty. Ooh he also was in a Matthias Schoenaerts movie. I like to think they made fast friends, him and Matty. Check Waël's Insta right here. Happy Friday!

 

Today's Mood

Okay this photo of Matthias Schoenaerts and his doggy in a lake (via) isn't actually "Today's Mood" -- it would make a lot more sense categorized as one of our aspirational "Fanboy Delusion" posts -- but I'm willing it to be my mood since I could really use its vibes after such a shit week. I am drinking in its luxurious calmness in hopes it will choke down the swill and bile that's been spraying out. Grant me your serenity, Matthias!

Catching Up With Matty

Those of us who worship at the altar of Matthias Schoenaerts are not fed well -- he hasn't been in anything since The Regime with Kate Winslet aired ten and a half lifetimes ago (otherwise known as uhh one year ago) and that's the way it's been for awhile -- one project a year, here and there, sporadically. We cannot surive this way, Matthias! Thanksfully there was some news on the Matty front this morning though -- he's signed in to star in a movie called Le Cowboy which has the super original storyline of a criminal roped into doing "one last job" that involves kidnapping a girl but then the two bond... yeah, we've seen this movie a thousand times before. Whatever. I'll watch him put his spin on it! The writer-director is Shane Atkinson whose film LaRoy Texas starring Steve Zahn and John Magaro played Tribeca last year and left not a huge impression on me, but I remember some people digging it. 

Anyway that spot of new news made me realize that if we're lucky we might be coming to an end on the Schoenaerts drought -- I had completely forgotten for one that he is playing the bad guy in the Supergirl movie that DC hired I Tonya director Craig Gillespie to direct and which has apparently already been filmed. And he's also somehow in The Old Guard 2 even though (spoiler) he died in the first one, and we just got the first image from that movie last week. (See below.) So that must be coming out soon, I guess.

First look at THE OLD GUARD sequel! (And here's to hoping everybody's favorite ancient crime-fighting homosexuals Marwan Kenzari & Luca Marinelli have added Henry Golding into their mix)

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) April 23, 2025 at 12:50 PM

And then of course there's The Way of the Wind, Terrence Malick's now many years in the making movie about Jesus (yes, Christ) that has Matthias playing the disciple Peter.  We first posted about that movie getting started SIX YEARS AGO. With Malick though who knows -- he could take another six years. The names in that stacked cast are endless -- Mark Rylance, John Rhys-Davies, Joseph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, FRANZ ROGOWSKI, Eileen Atkins, Aidan Turner, Mathieu Kassovitz. Also since it's Malick half of those people could end up on the cutting room floor -- it could be three hours of Mark Rylance spinning in a field for all we know. 

ETA an hour after posting this Netflix unloaded some more images from The Old Guard 2 including one very much confirming Matthias' presence therein, and another one of eternal boyfriends Luca Marinelli & Marwan Kenzari, and far be it from me not to add them to this post!

The Old Guard 2 is out on July 2nd.

Oh and here's the trailer too since we're here:

Quote of the Day

There is a chat with director Luca Guadagnino and writer Justin Kuritzkes in Dazed magazine right now (thx Mac) about their latest colaboration Queer (the William S. Burroughs adaptation out in theaters now that I reviewed right here) and besides it containing several images from that film's set that I adore -- that one of him in a Carrie t-shirt above is going straight onto my mood board -- it's also got several bits of information I really enjoyed reading. Luca talks about why there's so much Nirvana in the film, and he also admits that Twin Peaks was an influence on it (but refuses to elaborate further). But it's the bit at the end that has nothing to do with Queer that has me the most excited -- and if you've seen my hemming and hawing then you know it's not about his possible American Psycho remake. 

No it's about An Even Bigger Splash, his long-gestating longer cut of his already divine 2015 film A Bigger Splash, which stars Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Dakota Johnson, and Ralph Fiennes. Luca has been mentioning this was a thing on his mind for awhile, and bless this interviewer for getting a very brief but important update:

 "Yes, for sure. 100 per cent. We’re finalising it."

Supposedly this cut has a full seventy more minutes! I don't know whether this is a good idea or not either, but Luca always proves my doubts wrong so you'd think I'd have learned my lesson at this point. And even if it does prove to be too much of a good thing -- am I going to complain about seventy more minutes of a movie where the godline Matthias Schoenaerts runs around in itty bitty shorts looking like a fucking sculpture? I don't think so. In summation here is a new photo that dropped online this week from the set of Luca's other 2024 film Challengers, with him in a spot where so many of us would love to be -- half-straddled by Mike Faist in his tennis gear:

Super Schoenaerts Away

Finally, some news on our beloved Matthias Schoenaerts, who we haven't seen or heard much of since The Regime ended -- he was so great on that show, you guys -- Deadline reported earlier this week (thx Mac) that he will play the villain in a new Supergirl movie. Which... well, you know. A superhero movie doesn't excite me a whole lot. For a second I pictured him playing the Faye Dunaway role from the 1984 movie though, and...

... that was exciting. But no they say the bad guy will probably be a character named "Krem of the Yellow Hills" which... uhh yeah okay. That's a name. In the comic the character is the one that kills "a young alien girl's father [and] draws Supergirl into the conflict." I guess this one is a big sci-fi story they say, and not your typical superhero origin story. Sure. Milly Alcock from House of the Dragon has been cast as Supergirl, and in good news Craig Gillespie of I, Tonya and the Pam & Tommy miniseries is directing the film. I tend to like Gillespie's stuff more than I don't. And then in maybe the best news out of all of this, Matthias' character as drawn in the comic is a shirtless bearded ginger stud:

He could pull that off.

All Hail King Matty

I actually kept my word for once this past weekend -- in case you weren't sure my word is shit and you should believe maybe about 0.001% of what I say -- and watched the first two (now three) episodes of The Regime, the Max series starring Kate Winslet and Matthias Schoenaerts and Andrea Riseborough that I said on Friday that I wanted to get around to watching. Imagine that! Wonders do not not ever stop ceasing or whatever. Anyway I'm enjoying it so far -- on Saturday when I got to the end of the second episode and realized that was all they had dropped so far I was upset to discover there wasn't more; I'd thought it was one of those whole series binge drops. I could've and would've watched the whole thing.

Alas. Anyway I'm not buying the complaints I've seen about the satire of it not being funny enough -- first off that voice Winslet's rocking is enough for ten comdies. But we already have a Veep and a Death of Stalin and that's clearly what those complaining people want from the show. People get very upset when they're not sure how to react to something! But I think it's doing something stranger and more particular tonally than that. I like when I can't nail down a show so easily and The Regime seems to me to be currently hovering in a sweet spot so far between satire and seriousness that keeps surprising me and feels all its own. We'll see anyway -- we are only three episodes in.

That said as you can see here the most important thing of all is that Matthias is doing press for the show! So we're getting new photos of him! Like these ones for Numero Netherlands magazine! There's also a chat -- read it here. Here is a choice bit from the chat, not about The Regime but about what Matty has lined up next:

"There is a movie we shot four years ago with the great Terrence Malick — it’s a project he’s been working on for more than thirty years now, and he’s been editing four years. I’m very curious to see what film comes out of that very intimate process he’s been going through for so long. Hopefully it will come out this year. Then, of course, we have ‘The Old Guard 2’, which is a sequel to the first one since it was very well received. It came out two years ago on Netflix. And then there’s other few future projects on the table that I still have to read, and a few that I had already committed myself to, but they haven’t been announced yet, so I always keep that in silence."

Do we know wtf he's talking about re: the Malick movie? Something he's been working on for 30 years? I'm also surprised to see him mention the sequel to The Old Guard given [spoiler] that his character was killed in the first movie. But please yes bring him back -- I daren't dream they might. Everything's coming up Matty! Including funny enough the photoshoot for this magazine, which I've got the entire lot of after the jump...

Matthias Schoenaerts Three Times

It's really quite ridiculous that I haven't watched any of The Regime yet on Max -- it's the A Little Chaos reunion that everybody's been waiting for! Have any of you actually ever seen A Little Chaos? The 2014 movie -- holy shit, where are all the 10-year-anniversary pieces on A Little Chaos -- about romantically entangled French landscape artists that Alan Rickman directed right before he died? I won't go so far as saying that the movie killed Alan Rickman, because it's not actually a bad movie. It's a fine movie that is vandalized by the terrible wig that they plopped down on Matthias Schoenaerts' head. 

Anyway Matthias has now re-teamed with his romantically-entangled rival landscape-artist Kate Winslet in The Regime and it's ridiculous that I haven't watched any of The Regime, is my point. It really seems like the kind of thing that will be right up my alley. Have any of you watched it? I will definitely get on that this weekend. All of that said it's basically the weekend now, so I probably won't post anything else today. So y'all have a good one! Weekend, I mean. Oh and go see Love Lies Bleeding (here is my review) now that it's in wide release! What a fucking movie that is. I mean it's no A Little Chaos but what is? (pics via)

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Elle (2016)

Michèle: I'm very sorry for all you've been through.

Rebecca: Fortunately, I have faith. What's it for

if not to get through tough times.

An incredibly super duper happy 46th birthday to the actress Virginie Efira, who's managed to skyrocket to the ranks of one of our favorite working actresses in the six years since the movie quoted above. It wasn't that movie that did it -- that movie was obviously Huppert's show and then some (here's my review), although Efira did leave a mark in that scene (one that actually changed the way I viewed the entire movie). But no it was the next movie that Verhoeven made with her that did it -- Benedetta, glorious Benedetta (my review), which of course starred Efira as a lesbian nun who goes mad with holiness, of several different sorts. 

What a picture!!! But as revelatory an experience as that film was Efira's has proved herself as much if not even more formidable elsewhere -- she's tremendous in the 2019 movie Sibyl, which I reviewed during that year's NYFF right here. That was how I knew she'd kill it in Benedetta -- and sure enough!

And then I saw her in two films in the past year which have proven beyond any shadow she's the real f'ing deal -- I haven't written properly about Other People's Children (it just got released a few weeks ago here) but our pal Cláudio did at The Film Experience and I underline everything he says about it. Click that link and read.

I did not have anything near enough time to review the also-out-this-week OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN (which I saw at Sundance) but go see it, see it, SEE IT! Virginie Efira is a MARVEL, truly one of our best working today. An unforgettable heartbreaker, this one @musicboxfilms pic.twitter.com/LGajocQHk8

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 21, 2023

And then there's Revoir Paris from director Alice Winocour, which I saw at my beloved annual "Rendez-vous with French Cinema" series here in NYC at Film at Lincoln Center back in March -- Efira is once again phenomenal, this time as a woman who survives a mass shooting and falls apart as she can't remember what happened in the aftermath. It's a perfect companion piece to Winocour's film Disorder with Matthias Schoenaerts (reviewed here); they'd make a great double-feature actually, both being about people manifesting their reactions to trauma in experiential, outward ways.

Anyway Revoir Paris is being released here in the U.S. on June 23rd in New York and then in L.A. the next week, with a wider roll-out to follow planned, and we very much recommend seeking it out. We very much recommend seeking out all of the movies I have mentioned here, all because of the magnificent Efira. Here's the trailer:

Prince Matthias Can Storm My Castle

I don't know how any Matthias Schoenaerts project ever slips by me -- I tend to be on top of him, although never in the way I wanna be. But one that reunites him with his Little Chaos co-star Kate Winslet and also stars Martha Plimpton and Andrea Riseborough???

Me missing word on this is straight up psychotic! It's called The Regime and it's a limited-series for HBO from director Stephen Frears described as telling "the story of one year within the walls of the palace of a modern European regime as it begins to unravel.” Here's the teaser released today:

It's got a real Death of Stalin vibe, right? Or is it just Riseborough who's making me think that? Anyway Kate Winslet is fabulous at dark-comedy so it's good to see her doing something that will give her room there to play, and Matthias with this buzzcut? Consider me sitting erect already! But I'd better take a pill because this isn't being released until 2024 -- WTF? Why they torment me like this?

Matthias Schoenaerts One Time

Hoping there are more photos from this shoot to come, what with his turn as Django hitting supposedly some time soon, but we'll take whatever Matty wants to throw our way (via) and be grateful, dammit. But it's never enough!

Matthias Schoenaerts Real Fake News

While we wait impatiently to see beloved Belgian beefcake Matthias Schoenaerts tackle the iconic role of the gunslinger Django (originally given gorgeous life by Franco Nero) in a series hitting UK's SkyTV sometime this year (here's the trailer), here is some new news on his next project to get us by -- he's re-teaming with his Bullhead and The Racer and the Jailbird director Michaël R. Roskam to make a movie called Le Faux Soir (which translates to "The Fake Evening"), a retelling of a true-life tale from WWII "when the Belgian resistance secretly produced a spoof version of the country’s leading newspaper, Le Soir, which had become a propaganda tool of the occupying Nazi forces." (thx Mac) It's reminding me a little bit of Paul Verhoeven's Black Book, but probably just because...

... that movie was the first place I ever noticed Matthias. But also he was playing a resistance fighter in WWII, so. God I need to watch Black Book again, it's been a little while. What a perfect goddamned movie Black Book is. Anyway it's a little hypocritical of me to say that Matthias re-teaming with Roskam is an instant win from me because this loser typing at you here has somehow still not gotten around to watching The Racer and the Jailbird. I don't know how that is. I think I heard it was just mediocre and I didn't want to be disappointed. Anyway I need to get on that -- perhaps this weekend a Racer and the Jailbird and a Black Book double-feature will be on the books.

Good Morning, World

A happy 45 to Matthias Schoenaerts today, here pictured being exactly where I want to be doing exactly what I want to be doing -- pulling the damn covers back over my face and giving myself another fifteen hours of sleep. Alas, onward. In particular onward to a screening I have this morning -- I'll be off-line for the next few hours; til mid-afternoon I suppose. Until then just sit and think about Matthias -- believe me, it will help.

Pics of the Day

About one month ago I shared with y'all the first brief teaser trailer for Matthias Schoenaerts' turn as the gunslinger Django (previously immortalized by the handsome, to put it mildly, Franco Nero) in a series for Sky TV. I didn't have a release date then and I still don't have one now -- as far as I know it's just sometime in 2023 -- but what I do have for you (via) are eleven new photos of our Matty boy in character. Now don't get me wrong, I will be all over this show when it does come out, but (superficial moment, but what do you expect from MNPP) I do wish his hair was shorter. I never think he looks his best with long hair. Oh well -- he will surely be great in the role, since he literally is always great, and I suppose I can comfort myself with that! Hit the jump for the whole pack of pics...

Schoen, Schoen on the Range

File this one under "projects I forgot were happening whilst I was distracted by a global pandemic" -- last February I told you that our big Belgian boy Matthias Schoenaerts was going to star in a limited series remake of Django, the famed Western series that once upon a time starred the gorgeous Franco Nero. Well they went and made the damned thing! And we know have a trailer. It's not quite all as dark as that shot above but since Django peering out from under his hat is the iconic Django shot...

... I figured the compare-contrast was important. Anyway also in the series (as you'll see in the trailer) is Noomi Rapace playing the black-suited villain and good golly does she appear to be having fun. I don't immediately recognize any other actors, nor am I familiar with the creators of the series (they made the show Gomorrah though, if you're familiar) -- all's I can tell you is this is as of now set to air on Sky in the UK next year, Here's the trailer:

What do we think? I'm ride-or-die for Matty obviously.

Which is Hotter?

Today we wish a happy 48th birthday to the great Aussie director Justin Kurzel, who's batting a nearly perfect score from where I stand. I say "nearly" because his big foray into Hollywood, his Assassin's Creed adaptation, didn't work at all, save valiant efforts by all involved. But look at the other movies under his belt from the past eleven years -- Snowtown! Macbeth! True History of the Kelly Gang! Nitram! (I still haven't seen his segment in the anthology film The Turning.) 

Those are all terrific movies with a strong directorial voice and vision -- he has already fulfilled the promise of when Snowtown knocked me out in 2011 and then some extra left over. There sure aren't many male directors doing a better job dissecting toxic masculinity in our current moment...

... and that he does it, at least partially anyway, by shooting all of his leading men like I would shoot all of the hot leading men that he keeps hiring? And then even more, you add on the fact that he is married to the queen Essie Davis? We got ourselves a king here!

He's also got a pile of killer projects on the immediate horizon lined up -- his sci-fi flick Morning with Benedict Cumberbatch and Laura Dern! (That one is already filmed.) His limited series Shantaram with Charlie Hunnam! (I believe that's also been filmed, at least partially.) And then there's Ruin, his WWII flick with Margot Robbie and Matthias Schoenaerts -- there hasn't been an update on this one in awhile so it might not be happening, but let's will it to be! Justin Kurzel filming Matthias is a thing I definitely need in this life. Anyway in Kurzel's honor -- and to fill a distinct lack of Michael Fassbender posting recently -- let's do ourselves a poll...

online polls

Henry Golding Four Times

A few more photos of Henry Golding modeling for David Yurman have been released (via) -- I wouldn't blame you if you forgot the previous three photos since they were dropped five entire months ago, so you can click here for a refresher. They're just more of the same sexy browns and golds... taking his name literally there, ain't they? Anyway career-wise did you see the first picture of Henry Golding on the set of The Old Guard sequel alongside Marwan Kenzari & Luca Marinelli, the immortal homosexuals we all loved so much in the first movie? I guess Henry is filling the hole left by Matthias Schoenaerts and yeah I'm just gonna see myself out after writing that sentence. Hit the jump for three more pics...

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be... 

... pawing at Matthias Schoenaerts on the beach.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Bullhead (2011)

Narrator: Sometimes in a man's life stuff happens that makes everyone go quiet. So quiet that no one even dares talk about it. Not to anyone, not even to themselves. Not in their head and not out loud. Not a fucking word. Cos everything has somehow got stuck. There, deep in the fields, under the trees and the leaves, year after year. Then, suddenly it all comes back. Just like that, from one day to the next. No matter how long ago it was, there will always be someone to bring it all back. Because no matter what you do or think, one thing is for sure. You're always fucked. Now, tomorrow, next week or next year, until the end of time. Fucked.

Although director Michaël R. Roskam's modern masterpiece is listed as a 2011 film since it came out in his home country of Belgium in February of 2011, it took the movie just over a full year to finally make its way to the U.S., and that makes today it's 10th anniversary for us! And since, even besides the film being a classic rumination on the state of modern masculinity, this is the movie where Mathias Schoenaerts became Matthias Schoenaerts, and for that alone it must be celebrated. 

The son of a famous actor and a costume designer Matthias had been acting since childhood (he was thirteen in his first film called Daens, which was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars in 1993) and I'd even seen him in Paul Verhoeven's Black Book in a small role before Bullhead (in related news the Anthology Film Archives here in NYC is screening Black Book a few times over the next two weeks!) but Bullhead, I think we can all agree, was his big breakout role. And with good reason -- he's tremendous in it. Pun obviously intended. I mean look at him!