With The Phoenician Scheme, writer-director Wes Anderson, producer Roman Coppola, and (especially) Benicio del Toro create an instantly iconic antihero. Inscrutable, compelling, worldly, and completely singular in Wes Anderson’s world.
Amid the sun-drenched shores of the Mediterranean, a peculiar ensemble of characters—an exiled archaeologist, a disgraced diplomat, and a runaway heiress—find themselves entangled in a grand deception spanning centuries. As cryptic Phoenician artifacts begin surfacing in unexpected places, whispers of an elaborate scheme emerge, linking the past to a scandalous present. Through meticulously framed scenes and pastel-infused palettes, Anderson weaves a tale of destiny, deception, and delightful absurdity, where love, loss, and historical intrigue collide in ways both heartwarming and hilariously tragic. With secret rendezvous in quaint harbour cafés and a mysterious ledger that may—or may not—unravel the truth, The Phoenician Scheme is a whimsical voyage through time and betrayal.
The ruthless, charismatic European business tycoon: an archetype distinctly different from his American counterparts, an even grander, almost mythic, figure against the swiftly-shifting backdrop of the continent’s extraordinary post-war transformation. At present, in 1950, we find Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro): one of the richest men in Europe and most sought-after dealmakers on any continent; ruthless capitalist, industrialist, and de facto diplomat; an itinerant with multiple passports, yet no fixed address, bound by few borders and fewer rules. Also, a man of exquisite taste and boundless curiosity, a relentless collector of antiquities and natural treasures, criss-crossing the globe always with a book and personal tutor in tow (in addition to, if needed: a crate of hand-grenades).
Possessed with calmness, elegance, cunning, and flair, Zsa-zsa is reminiscent of a number of twentieth-century US robber barons who built the rails and cornered markets, and the titans abroad who piped oil across the desert—creating early templates for the billionaire buccaneers that still dominate industries today. “A certain type of businessman who can always pivot,” says writer/producer/director Wes Anderson, “and has very little obligation to honor the truth.”
Zsa-zsa is inscrutable and unknowable, like many cinematic depictions of larger than life men of industry, the giant of all being Orson Welles as Charles Foster Kane, among many others in cinematic history (including Welles’s lesser known Mr. Arkadin, even a more mysterious character than Kane). The characters are amalgams of gangsters, behind the scenes string-pullers, shape-shifters and brutes who get what they want by their will and questionable legality, sometimes horrible men, but sometimes redeemable, and often, even, heroic. Though for now, it remains to be seen which Zsa-zsa is.
“The beginning of the story was to try to invent something about one of these 1950s Euro tycoons, like an Onassis or Niarchos,” says Anderson. “I had read about Árpád Plesch and Calouste Gulbenkian, or Gianni Agnelli as well.”
What begins as a solitary hero’s story, very quickly presents itself as much richer and deeper. In very short order, we meet Liesl, and what is immediately evident is that this will be the journey of two people, with their individual paths, yet completely intertwined. In simplest terms, this is the story of a father and daughter’s newfound relationship. “Zsa-zsa strategically decides he needs to bring his daughter back into his life because she will serve the purposes of his business interests,” says Anderson. “In the course of the movie, as he continues to be threatened and struggles with changing circumstances and new enemies, his strategy begins to evaporate, and is replaced by an aspiration to be a father instead.”
Del Toro is much more direct in his assessment: “The father/daughter angle is the heart of the piece.” For one key scene between Zsa-zsa and Liesl, he recalls how Anderson asked him to look directly into the camera, even though Threapleton was sitting to his side. It worked, he marveled. “It’s almost like I am talking to the audience. I’m making everyone in the audience feel what Zsa-zsa feels for Liesl.”
In addition to the real life and cinematic inspirations, there was a personal connection to the subject matter for Wes Anderson that added another layer to the creation of Zsa-zsa Korda. “That theme might have something to do with me having a daughter,” he says, “and I suppose the father/daughter aspects also reflect the father of my wife Juman, Fouad Malouf, a Lebanese businessman, and her experiences with him, and my experiences, too. In a way, he’s the first inspiration for the movie. Something in Zsa-zsa is just totally rooted in Fouad.”
The colorful characters who populate Zsa-zsa’s world, who are key to the scheme, were also drawn in part from people in Fouad Malouf’s world, to whom the film is dedicated. Anderson says, “This was somewhat inspired by Fouad’s circle of colleagues, and we had the idea that certain colleagues would specialize in certain tasks in this big infrastructure project: a shipping magnate, a kingdom, railroad men. He had his company, his team, and a series of colleagues. I asked him what they were like and he said: ‘All lions.’”
There have been other single-minded characters in Anderson’s films, whose purpose (and quests for redemption) are often heralded by their name in the title: Royal Tenenbaum and his children, the shark-hunting Steve Zissou, and revenge-minded Mr. Fox. But all their desires collectively combined can’t match the scale of what Zsa-zsa wants. He is a new, instantly iconic creation of Anderson’s.
Casting / On Set
Anderson only ever had one person he could conceive playing the character of Zsa-zsa. “The interest for me in writing a story about a character like that was the visual in my mind of Benicio playing the character. The idea for the movie was to write a part specifically for Benicio del Toro” says Wes. “I first brought this up with Benicio in 2021, at Cannes for The French Dispatch. I told him then that something was coming his way if he was interested. Benicio and I started working on it very early. As soon as there were fifteen pages of the script, he’d seen that. There was never a moment in the process when Benicio was not involved.” Del Toro was the only actor Anderson ever imagined the part, at least in the modern era, “The kind of character who might have been played by Anthony Quinn, or maybe Lino Ventura, or Jean Gabin,” he says.
As Bjorn, the Norwegian tutor and entomologist Michael Cera brought his own characterization to the role Wes had written for him. “He was the guy we wanted from the beginning,” says Anderson. “He knew about the script right off the bat, and there was no one else for the part. He invented Bjorn’s manner, accent and look.”
“The character was very, very complete in the script,” says Cera. “When we first approached it, I think Wes was a little surprised that I was talking about doing the accent. Of course, he wrote it so it’s Norwegian, so it had that, but I don’t think Wes had really thought about how it would be until I showed up. But we found it together, and committed to it, and went from there.”
In what is nearly impossible to believe as one of her first starring roles as Liesl, from whose point of view the action unfurls, is Mia Threapleton, now only twenty-three years old. “Once we had Mia,” Anderson says, “we had Liesl.”
The film is ultimately a three-hander. The leads joined Anderson at Studio Babelsberg for two weeks of rehearsals before the start of shooting.
With the scheme laid out (in an elaborate set of shoeboxes) and “the gap” widening (due to one of many possible adversaries), the three set out on their quest across Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia, to meet with (and enlist the help of) each of the business partners in each of the shoeboxes.
Their first connection is with Prince Farouk, played by Riz Ahmed, in his first Anderson film. Farouk, and the kingdom they are negotiating with, “that comes a bit from Calouste Gulbenkian [the Armenian businessman, collector, and philanthropist] and his efforts in organizing the oil business in the Middle East, the nature of the politics there, and the different regions and fiefdoms,” says Anderson.
The gang then heads to an underground, literally in a tunnel, meeting with Leland and Reagan (played by Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston). “With the railroad men, even though it is a later era, we still wanted something coming from the robber baron period, a JP Morgan-type railway man, though being Californian. That led us to Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston.”
More faces of recognizable performers from previous Anderson films begin to appear in the roles of the partners whose cooperation, and financial contributions, hold the key to any hope of success for Zsa-zsa’s plan. Anderson wrote a part for Jeffrey Wright, following his recent turns in The French Dispatch and Asteroid City. “Essentially, I just wanted Jeffrey Wright, so we thought up an East Coast American whose business is shipping. There is a sort of fast-talking downtown New York and beatnik in the character.”
In the role of Cousin Hilda, Anderson says simply: “We wanted Scarlett in the movie.” On the site of her under-construction utopia/kibbutz, the idea was to demonstrate a time-honored form of pact-making, from ancient Egypt to modern monarchy. “She comes from some branch of Zsa-zsa’s family. It is also another way of negotiating—to marry—which is not a totally uncommon way of doing business.” We hasten to add that Hilda and Zsa-zsa are second cousins.
“Marseille Bob [played by Mathieu Amalric] comes out of Jean-Pierre Melville or Jacques Becker, and films like Bob le flambeur and Touchez pas au grisbi,” says Anderson. “We know these kinds of characters, but they’re from American films as much as the milieu of Paris. It’s American nightclub gangsters who we’ve seen press a button to let people into their office and have guns in their desk drawers. Though usually they are not interrupted by terrorist attacks—that’s a different direction we went in.”
“Richard [Ayoade, who plays the terrorist leader Sergio] is an old friend now. It is like that Buñuel thing as well, having a group of terrorists like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Buñuel has anarchy deep in his personality. I am sure the guerrillas come out of that; this idea that one of the most erudite people you will meet is also the leader of the jungle unit of this militia.”
“He’s not human. He’s biblical.”The final reveal, the character you have been hearing about all along, and now finally get to meet, is Uncle Nubar. An homage in name and look to Nubar Gulbenkian, the magnificently-bearded, famously litigious son of Calouste, with whom he battled to the end for control of the family fortune, he’s portrayed, with a menacing flair, by Benedict Cumberbatch.
“We had the great, good fortune that Benedict could come do the part. It’s one of those kinds of characters that people in the story keep talking about all along, but doesn’t enter until much later,” says Anderson. Like his real-life namesake, Nubar embodies the rancor and darkness that can take root when business and family mix—or, more precisely, when they don’t. Continues Anderson, “It is such a familiar story that these men totally neglect their children, who also expect them to achieve more than their peers.”
Whereas any kind of détente with Nubar will prove to be utterly impossible, his demise does close a previously unfinished chapter for Zsa-zsa and Liesl. Some people prove irredeemable, but as del Toro poetically says, not all: “I want to be optimistic and believe there is good in everyone. There are people with no good in them—it just happens. But for most people, I think, there’s still hope, it doesn’t matter how late. Doesn’t matter how old you are. There is still hope for mending things. Maybe it is not going to be how you hoped it would look—but you’ll get it.”
Questions Of Morality
Previous Anderson films had surrealist and fantastical moments, but not specific sequences that take place in another universe or dimension. Throughout the film, as Zsa-zsa has more near-death experiences, begins to develop more of a conscience about his dealings, and draws closer to Liesl, he encounters heavenly figures, before whom he sits in judgement. “These reveries express what is happening to his brain, as Zsa-zsa’s desire to finally be a father to Liesl, leads him unexpectedly, and without any desire to, reevaluate his life,” says Anderson. “He goes from being epic to being humble.”
As in heaven, so on Earth, Liesl’s own exploration of her faith connects father and daughter’s individual journeys, as well. Zsa-zsa, after all, had sent her to the convent at age 5. Says Threapleton of her preparation: “Wes asked me to have a look over the Bible. When I went to Rome for costume fittings, I made full use of any opportunity I had to look at anything with Catholic connections—different churches, art pieces. I spoke to as many people as I could about it.”
The religious elements also double back on Surrealism’s fascination with, and upending of, the sacred. “In part that takes its inspiration from Buñuel,” says Anderson. “Catholicism is woven into every Buñuel movie; somehow it’s one of the threads, and sometimes it’s most of the threads.”
Art & Craft
The vast majority of the film was shot at Studio Babelsberg, in Potsdam, Germany, the world’s oldest large-scale film studio, open since 1912. Anderson had filmed miniature sequences for The Grand Budapest Hotel there previously, and this would be, of his live-action films, the most he had ever shot on soundstages. Save for some exteriors, there were minimal location shoots. Says Anderson: “I knew the stages. Usually, there are one or two key locations and then you try to find a way for everything to fall in around those. In this case, it was going to be a movie made on a soundstage.”
There was also a new face on the set of an Anderson feature: cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. Anderson and Delbonnel had previously collaborated on commercials, but this would be the first film they made together. Delbonnel’s range stretches from working with Tim Burton, Julie Taymor and the Coens, to international auteurs Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alexander Sukurov and Alfonso Cuarón.
“It was of interest to have a European director of photography. It’s a different ingredient that brings something special,” says Anderson. “There is something darker that Bruno brought to the lighting of the film that was right for the story,” he adds. “Not darkness in terms of luminosity, but a darkness in personality.”
For the masterpieces in Korda’s house (where “we only burn the fakes”), the production used actual masterpieces. “We’ve done a lot of movies where we make original artwork,” says Anderson, “but right at the beginning I thought, ‘Let’s try to have the real things.’ The Renoir is from the Nahmad Collection, and Magritte is from the Pietzsch Collection. Other pieces are from the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Lots of surrealist work, photography, abstract expressionism, a 14th century wood carving.”
Anderson, along with Art Curator Jasper Sharp, considered the great and varied collections of the real-life men who, like Zsa-zsa, are obsessed with gathering art, antiquities, and natural specimens: Árpád Plesch’s botanical bounty; Calouste Gulbenkian’s 6,000-piece collection, spanning BC to AD, amassed in his own museum; or William Randolph’s private zoo, once the world’s largest, at San Simeon.
“It took a little arm-twisting to secure the loans,” says Sharp, who worked with Anderson on the selecting and securing the pieces. “Several people that I approached hung up the phone laughing. But a combination of curiosity and the sense of adventure won out, and the effect of their presence on set was remarkable.”
Anderson says: “I thought it would mean something to the actors to be with these real objects, and you would feel in the movie that they were real, you can feel it on the set. You can tell the difference and it has an aura to it. It also meant that there were people with gloves around to protect these objects, and that was interesting, too.”
WES ANDERSON (Writer/Director/Producer) was born in Houston, Texas. His films include Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch and Asteroid City, as well as the short film compilation The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More. His latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, is set for release on May 30 from Focus Features.
ROMAN COPPOLA (Story/Executive Producer) is a problem solver. Whether it’s in his multiple lives as a filmmaker, inventor, consultant, entrepreneur, advisor or tech visionary, Roman Coppola has proven time and again that there is no problem too challenging to solve using his filmmakers’ tool bag. His unique perspective informed by his unmatched wealth of diverse creative experiences enables him to translate his technical skills and creative storytelling to invent innovative solutions to unexpected challenges.
Coppola is best known as a director, screenwriter and producer, but his origins began by wearing all hats available. From sound recording to cinematography, writing, directing, producing and even acting, his hunger for experience and eager inquisitiveness led him to earn his first BAFTA nomination for his work as visual effects director on Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the age of 28.
This unwavering curiosity remains insatiable as ever, and he continues playing an integral part in many other film projects in every capacity, including second unit work, producing, and cowriting with frequent collaborators Sofia Coppola on such projects as Priscilla, Marie Antoinette, Lost in Translation, Somewhere, The Virgin Suicides and with Wes Anderson on projects including Asteroid City, The French Dispatch, Isle of Dogs, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Moonrise Kingdom, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
In addition to all of his collaborative efforts, Coppola has written, directed and produced his own feature films CQ and A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, as well as being the president of pioneering independent production company American Zoetrope, earning him producing credits on the aforementioned Sofia Coppola projects, as well as many other films including Walter Salles’ Cannes Palme d’Or nominated On the Road.
Coppola is also the founder and owner of award-winning commercial and music video production company The Directors Bureau, where his music video direction has been recognized with a Grammy nomination, 3 MTV VMAs for the now-legendary Fatboy Slim Praise You video, as well as residency in the MoMa permanent collection for his stream-of-consciousness video for Phoenix’s Funky Squaredance. He has directed countless other iconic music videos for the likes of Sir Paul McCartney, Daft Punk, Air, The Strokes and Phoenix, as well as promotional films for luxury brands including Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Zegna, and a docu-series for Suntory Whisky starring Keanu Reeves.
Coppola is also no stranger to television, winning a Golden Globe Award as co-creator of Mozart in the Jungle, and he has directed numerous television specials including The Strokes: MTV $2 Bill, the Emmy-nominated A Very Murray Christmas, Arcade Fire’s Saturday Night Live special Here Comes the Night Time, and Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special.
As an inventor, Coppola has many creations under his belt including an inflatable film enclosure Photobubble, colorful high-quality tote bags from Pacific Tote Company, and a streamlined communication app close to release. He also launched a revolutionary blockchain-based film community known as Decentralized Pictures with a community of 40,000 strong and growing daily, and most recently cofounded a quarterly culture magazine called Enthousiasmos.
Most recently, Coppola served as second-unit director on Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, served as an executive producer on Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, and is now finishing up on his latest feature collaboration with Wes Anderson, The Phoenician Scheme. What lies next for Coppola is as good your guess as it is his.
