Uncertainty surrounds the future of Todd Haynes’s untitled gay romance after it emerged that Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix reportedly exited days before the start of production in Mexico.
Haynes and regular producers Killer Films had lined up a Guadalajara shoot on the 1930s-set story about two men who fall in love and leave California for Mexico.
According to a report on Indiewire, Phoenix was in California when he pulled out days before cameras were ready to roll. Danny Ramirez from Top Gun: Maverick has been cast as the love interest.
Reports have said members of the production need to be paid and sets have been built.
Phoenix’s reason for departing Haynes’s follow-up to his Oscar-nominated May December remains unclear, although it is understood the star was a driving force on the project.
Speaking at the American Pavilion in Cannes last year, Haynes said Phoenix brought the idea to him and the pair developed the screenplay with Jon Raymond.
At the time the filmmaker said he believed the film would get an NC-17 rating, which Motion Picture Association gives to features containing extreme episodes of graphic sex, violence, or drug use.
mk2 Films boarded the project as sales agent prior to EFM in Berlin. Neither mk2 nor a representative for Killer Films had commented at time of writing.
Phoenix is expected to attend Venice Film Festival for the upcoming world premiere of Joker: Folie a Deux.
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