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“Triangle of Sadness” and “Force Majeure” filmmaker Ruben Östlund has spoken in detail about the story for his secretive next film, the dark comedy disaster drama “The Entertainment System Is Down”.
Keanu Reeves, Kirsten Dunst, Daniel Brühl, Nicholas Braun, Samantha Morton, and Tobias Menzies co-star in the film which has already been shot and is in the midst of the editing process.
Speaking with Screen Daily, Östlund revealed that the story is inspired by the legendary binge drinking session of cricketer David Boon (aka ‘Boony’), who reportedly drank 52 cans of beer on a flight from Sydney to London (nicknamed the ‘kangaroo route’) in 1989.
Östlund’s own observations of Australian men while spending time at his holiday house in Majorca have also played a part: “They have a very friendly, warm atmosphere. At the same time, they are very manly.”
The film is set aboard one of those long-haul kangaroo route flights which generally take 24 hours to complete (consisting of a 9-10 hour flight to Singapore, and then a 14 hour flight to London). In this case, the flight is going from London to Sydney after Australia has just lost the Ashes to England, and a boisterous but defeated group of cricket fans is on board.
Events begin when the plane’s entertainment system fails. To keep passengers occupied, the crew rigs up a single communal screen and tries to settle on a film everyone can watch.
The passengers become divided – some want to watch Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “Leviathan,” a larger group demands an Adam Sandler comedy instead. The disagreement gets so wild that crew members open part of the aircraft floor to repair the system, triggering a chain of events that compromises the plane.
Östlund plans to premiere the film during an actual airline flight in collaboration with an airline partner. A24 will theatrically release the film.
The news comes as airline Qantas the other day revealed an October 2027 launch date for Project Sunrise, the first non-stop ultra long-haul flights between Sydney and London, which clock in at 20-22 hours and will be the longest single commercial flight in the world.
The post Östlund’s “System” Was Inspired By A Boony Binge appeared first on Dark Horizons.
