A24 Landing U.S. Rights Deal For Two-Time Palme D’Or Winner Ruben Östlund’s Next Movie ‘The Entertainment System Is Down’

EXCLUSIVE: In a highly competitive situation at the Cannes market, A24 is landing an eight-figure deal to acquire U.S. rights to one of the biggest art house crossover projects in town in The Entertainment System is Down, the next movie from two-time Cannes Palme d’Or winner Ruben Östlund.

The deal was struck between A24 and Paris-based Co-Production Office, which has been making the rounds with the project at the Cannes market. The pic recently added Nicholas Braun and Samantha Morton to a starry cast that already includes Keanu Reeves, Kirsten Dunst and Daniel Brühl.

Entertainment System is Östlund’s follow-up to Triangle of Sadness, which won the Palme d’Or in 2022.  Like its predecessor a social satire, the new pic is set on a long-haul flight where the entertainment systems fail, and an eclectic group of international passengers are forced to face the horror of being bored.

As Deadline reported earlier this week, Östlund and his producer, Erik Hemmendorff, purchased a real-life Boeing 747 for the film. He told the press during a Cannes event hosted by Sweden’s Film i Väst that he will mount the production over 70 days on a studio lot. 

“We bought the plane and it was quite early in the process of the film. So suddenly it was like, ‘Oh, we have to make this film,” Östlund said at the presser, which Dunst and Brühl attended.

Dunst and Brühl will play a doomed married couple.

Östlund said this week he expected to be back at Cannes in 2026 when he will debut The Entertainment System Is Down. 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), his first Palme winner The Square (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022). 

Östlund is repped by WME.