Details have been sparse so far about writer/director Wes Anderson’s new period piece comedy-drama The Grand Budapest Hotel until today, but Screen Daily has a bunch of new details. Here’s the plot:
The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.
In addition the enormous, previously-announced ensemble cast of Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Jude Law, Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Saoirse Ronan, Mathieu Amalric, F Murray Abraham and Bob Balaban, Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton) and newish kid actor Tony Revolori have been added. Grand Budapest Hotel is mostly set in the ‘30s but also has some scenes in the ‘60s, according to Jude Law, and Anderson has said the movie seeks to emulate the feel of movies by Billy Wilder and Ernst Lubtisch, specifically citing Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner and To Be or Not to Be. The film is expected to be released in late 2013 or 2014, so you’re going to have to satisfy your quirkiness fix elsewhere until then.