Knight of Cups producers share new details about the Terrence Malick film

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Besides dealing with "temptation, celebrity, and excess," there isn't a lot of info on the upcoming Terrence Malick film KNIGHT OF CUPS. We do know the cast includes Christian Bale, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Joel Kinnaman, Antonio Banderas, Nick Offerman, Imogen Poots, Wes Bentley and Ryan O'Neal, but since this is a Malick flick, there's always a chance some of those actors won't end up appearing in the movie, and Banderas recently said he's not sure who he's playing.

Antonio Banderas, when asked by Collider if he read a monologue as himself or the character:

I don’t know, actually. I don’t know. But I am very curious to see what this genius of movies did…I arrived to the set and basically what [Malick] said to me, ‘Antonio, we didn’t send you a script because we don’t have a script and so this monologue that I gave you,’ which literally didn’t make sense whatsoever, ‘I’m gonna shoot it in nine different locations and I’m gonna just improvise with you, and I’m gonna send you something that I call torpedoes.’ And these torpedoes, they were people that came in the middle of the monologue and started improvising with me. He sent me a beautiful woman, he sent me an old lady, he sent me a bunch of three guys that are rappers. I ended up in a pool with three ladies with my tuxedo.

So what is KNIGHT OF CUPS about? In an interview with THR, producers Min Kao and Alex Walton revealed a few new details, including Christian Bale's role in the movie. Kao says Bale plays "Rick, who is a screenwriter and filmmaker living in California. From the outside, it looks like he has everything. Inside, he's empty in a lot of ways, and this is his journey of figuring out a way to fill the void."

Min Kao was also asked if he had to keep bugging Terrence Malick about when his "stream-of-consciousness" film would be finished.

It's all about calibrating expectations. He was working on a stream-of-consciousness film that he was very frustrated by. So, very early on, I threw out the idea that he was going to deliver the film on time. What I did do was encourage Terry to ask for help. His process is to shoulder most of the load and feel very protective about what he's doing.

Like THE TREE OF LIFE and TO THE WONDER, it sounds like KNIGHT OF CUPS will be another intriguing movie from Terrence Malick, but the question is will it be any good? Most people enjoyed THE TREE OF LIFE, however TO THE WONDER received extremely mixed reviews. I'm definitely interested in checking it out, even though I have no clue what might be going on in Malick's new film.

KNIGHT OF CUPS still doesn't have a release date yet, but it will likely be in theaters sometime this year, and it will premiere at the Berlin Film Festival later this month.