How can it be that Michael Cera has not been in a Wes Anderson film until now? That doesn’t make sense at all! Cera is like a fictional character born of an Andersonian miniature world! They look related! I swear I can picture him in a thin little mustache and too-short shorts, as a Boy Scout troop leader or maybe a bellhop! You mean to tell me he wasn’t even a voice in Fantastic Mr. Fox? He never played a little talking stoat? I could have sworn Michael Cera has voiced a little talking stoat in a little tweed coat!
But no: It turns out that this spring, Cera will appear in his first-ever Anderson joint, a film called The Phoenician Scheme. The movie, co-written by Anderson and Roman Coppola, tells the tale of Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), “one of the richest men in Europe,” his daughter-slash-nun Sister Liesl (Mia Threapleton), and her tutor Bjorn Lund, played by Cera. Del Toro recently had a standout role in Anderson’s 2021 film The French Dispatch. Threapleton is the daughter of Kate Winslet.
Rounding out the cast are some Anderson players old and new, including Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Richard Ayoade, Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, and Benedict Cumberbatch. The Phoenician Scheme will be released in theaters by Focus Features on May 30, 2025, mending a rift in the universe.