After playing the titular character in 2023’s John Wick: Chapter 4, Keanu Reeves is once again planning to dominate the big screen, and this time, it will be a collaboration between him and acclaimed filmmaker Ruben Östlund. The actor is reportedly in talks to appear in the upcoming airplane disaster film The Entertainment System Is Down.
Östlund is primarily known for working in the genre of drama, particularly in films that explore social and psychological themes with a satirical and sometimes darkly comedic approach. Previously, the Swedish filmmaker won the Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival for Triangle of Sadness, a film that was up for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars. And now the visionary auteur is up for another ambitious project, The Entertainment System Is Down. Just like Ostlund’s other projects, this is also expected to be a dark comedy with the elements of satire.
What can be expected from Keanu Reeves’s upcoming project with Ruben Östlund?
According to Variety, The Entertainment System Is Down is a “social satire set on a long-haul flight on which the entertainment system isn’t working, sparking chaos and rages among passengers.”
In the upcoming film, Keanu Reeves will appear alongside a star-studded ensemble cast that will include several international actors; however, the rest of the cast members have yet to be announced.
Previously, while promoting Triangle of Sadness in 2022, Östlund shared some details regarding the plot of his upcoming movie. He told Variety, “It takes place on a long-haul flight. And quite soon after take-off, the crew of the flight is telling the passengers that the entertainment system is down. They are now stuck on a 15 or 17-hour-long flight without any digital entertainment. They don’t have the screens that we are so used to in our contemporary world. So it’s going to be like a study of how human beings interact in this little laboratory that is a plane. It will look at how modern human beings are wrecked under these circumstances.”
When asked whether he was going to make the film in Sweden or elsewhere, the filmmaker also teased, “I haven’t decided yet. Once again, it’s a possibility to have an international cast because these long-haul flights always have international passengers.”
The film will be co-produced by Östlund and Erik Hemmendorff through their banner Plattform Produktion based in Goteborg, Sweden, while Philippe Bober’s Coproduction Office is co-producing and will handle international sales on the movie.
While it will be interesting to see Reeves in a fresh role, his other upcoming projects are also highly anticipated. The actor will return to the big screen in December by providing the voice of the animated character Shadow the Hedgehog in Sonic the Hedgehog 3. He will also appear in Aziz Ansari’s upcoming movie Good Fortune, in which he plays an angel. Apart from that, Reeves is also currently working on Jonah Hill’s dark comedy film Outcome.
