Mike Leigh Starts Work on New Film Shooting This Year with Support from Team Behind ‘Hard Truths’

While his reunion with “Secrets & Lies” star Marianne Jean-Baptiste for 2024’s “Hard Truths” may not have yielded the awards glory many were hoping for, Mike Leigh rides on, gearing up to start work on a new project shooting in 2025.

In a release obtained by IndieWire, it was announced Leigh will be reteaming with “Hard Truths” collaborators Bleecker Street, Cornerstone, StudioCanal, and U.K. financier Film4 on bringing the film to market. Desmar also joins the team as an equity financier, with Georgina Lowe producing on behalf of Leigh’s production shingle, Thin Man Films.

Plot details on the film are under wraps as it’s likely not even Leigh knows entirely what the film will be about. As is his practice, Leigh comes into a new work only with loose ideas and a cast of actors he’s interested in shaping those ideas with. Over the course of months-long rehearsals, his cast independently build their characters before uniting to improvise together and form a script.

In describing this process in an interview with IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio, Jean-Baptiste said, “Basically, there is no pitch. The only pitch is, ‘Let’s work together again.’ I know what the process is, so I know I am going in completely blind, that I have to turn up with a list of people that I know, and that we’re going to filter that list, and that we’ll get to two, three people, five in this case, and merge them, and that’s going to be the starting point of building this character. But there’s no, like, ‘It’s going to be about this sort of woman or that sort of woman.'”

Last year, at the New York Film Festival, Leigh also caught up with IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, with whom he shared the challenges of getting work made, not only as a man in his 80s, but as an artist who doesn’t come into a project with a clear set of plans. Nonetheless, even at that moment, Leigh was planning his next moves.

“I’m only 81,” he said. “It’s a challenge physically. My cinematographer, Dick Pope, who I’ve worked with ever since ‘Life is Sweet,’ had major heart surgery just before we started shooting. Our sound recordist, who we’ve worked with for years, was a little bit younger than us, and went off to hospital twice during the shoot. I can’t get upstairs easily. But hey, we did it. Anything’s possible. Retirement doesn’t seem particularly attractive. I’ve got notions kicking around. I’m not going to tell you. It depends on how much money we get.”

Unfortunately, only a short time after that interview was given, Pope passed away, making Leigh’s upcoming feature the first not be shot be his longtime friend and collaborator in 35 years.

“Hard Truths” was released in the U.S. by Bleecker Street earlier this year on January 10, preceded by an awards qualifying run on December 6, 2024. Studiocanal handled the U.K. release, which kicked off today, while Cornerstone dealt with international sales, as it will be doing once more for Leigh’s latest work at the European Film Market in Berlin, which takes place February 13-19, in conjunction with the 75th Berlinale.