Ruben Östlund has officially started principal photography in Budapest on his long-gestated movie The Entertainment System is Down.
The dark satire, set on a long-haul flight between England and Australia where the entertainment system fails and passengers are forced to face the horror of being bored, will shoot in the Hungarian capital over a 70-day period from January to May 2025.
The set has been built around a real Boeing 747, which was acquired specifically for the project.
As shooting starts, Connor Swindells, Daniel Webber, Wayne Blair, Dan Wyllie, Lindsay Duncan, Allan Corduner, Sofia Tjelta Sydness, Erin Ainsworth, Myles Kamwendo, Sanna Sundqvist and Tea Stjärne, and Swedish artist Benjamin Ingrosso have also been revealed as being part of the cast.
They join previously announced cast Kirsten Dunst, Daniel Brühl, Keanu Reeves, Nicholas Braun, Samantha Morton and Tobias Menzies.
The Entertainment System is Down is produced by Plattform Produktion (Sweden) with Essential Films (Germany) and Parisienne de Production (France). Co-producers are BBC Film, Film i Väst, Sveriges Television, ZDF/ARTE, ARTE France Cinéma, SF Studios, Eye Eye Pictures (Norway), Paloma Productions (Denmark).
The film is financed by the Swedish Film Institute, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA), the Norwegian Film Institute, the Danish Film Institute, with the participation of Canal+, Disney+ and ARTE France and with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA.
World sales are handled by Coproduction Office, and a first deal with A24 for U.S. distribution rights has already been announced.
The project will mark Östlund’s second English-language film and seventh feature after The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008), Play (2011), Force Majeure (2014), and his two Palme d’Or winners, The Square (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022).
