The Phoenician Scheme

In 1950, arms dealer and industrialist Anatole "Zsa-Zsa" Korda narrowly survives an assassination attempt. While unconscious, he enters the afterlife, where a divine court judges his worthiness to enter Heaven. Knowing he cannot run from assassins forever, Korda tries to mend his relationship with his only daughter, Catholic novice Sister Liesl. He asks Liesl to quit the Church and take over his business. Liesl's father sent her away to a convent at the age of five. Korda and Liesl have a testy relationship; he is rumored to have murdered Liesl's mother, although he denies this. Liesl also meets Bjørn, a Norwegian entomologist and Korda's tutor for his nine sons, though he soon takes on the position of Korda's administrative assistant as the other one was blown in half during the previous assassination attempt. Governments around the world seek to curb Korda’s unethical business practices and his tendency to manipulate global conflict and peace to suit his own interests. An opportunity arises when Korda stakes his fortune on a risky scheme to overhaul the infrastructure of Phoenicia with slave labor. Government agent Excalibur conspires to drive up the price of building materials, which threatens to bankrupt Korda. With Liesl and Bjørn in tow, Korda meets with and attempts to swindle his investors. He deceitfully asks Californians Leland and Reagan to sign a contract increasing their financial contribution without telling them about the change, blackmails French nightclub owner Marseille Bob, and threatens to kill East Coast businessman Marty in a suicide bombing. Although his investors are enraged, Korda worms his way out of each scenario. However, the investors agree to cover only 50% of the budget shortfall. During the trip, Liesl and Korda explore their odd relationship. After taking a bullet for Marseille Bob, Korda meets Liesl's mother in the afterlife; she tells him that he is not Liesl's father. Korda realizes that all he had to offer his family was money, not love. In addition, during his confrontation with Marty, a guilt-ridden Korda admits he knew Liesl's mother was having an affair with his estranged half-brother Nubar. To get back at her, he faked a story that she was also having an affair with Nubar's assistant, which prompted Nubar to kill her and the assistant both. He also admits he still does business with Nubar, who has also invested in the Phoenician scheme. Liesl is outraged at her father's amorality but agrees to continue helping him so that she can send Nubar to jail. In a last-ditch attempt to avoid asking Nubar for help, Korda offers to marry his cousin Hilda, an heiress to the Korda armaments fortune. She accepts his proposal but refuses to increase her investment. On the flight back home, saboteurs destroy Korda's plane. The wreckage reveals evidence that Bjørn is a spy working for Excalibur's consortium. However, he agrees to switch sides, as he has fallen in love with Liesl. Korda explains to Liesl that their family has been dysfunctional for generations. Disturbed, Liesl resolves to quit the family business and return to the Church. A group of guerillas rescue the party and take them home, where Liesl's mother superior dismisses her from the order, explaining that she is too materialistic for the religious life. Korda, Liesl, and Bjørn finally meet with Nubar, who denies being Liesl's real father and announces that he is withdrawing his entire investment. Having failed to meet the budget shortfall with Nubar's withdrawal, Korda decides to change his ways: he converts to Catholicism, pays his workers, and throws his entire fortune into completing the Phoenician scheme, reasoning that finishing a worthy project will give his life meaning. Korda's investors gather at the Desert Oasis Palace hotel to witness a presentation of his scheme, where Nubar returns and reveals that he was the one trying to kill Korda all along, reasoning that life is a game of "who could lick whom". Nubar tries to kill Korda in a brawl, but Korda defeats him. Although Korda is bankrupted, Liesl is impressed and agrees to accept him as her father. The two retire to a simpler life running a small bistro. Hilda has her brief marriage to Korda annulled and gives back her wedding ring. Korda loans the ring to Bjørn, who proposes to Liesl; she accepts. At the end of the day, Liesl and Korda play cards together as a family. == Cast ==

Other actors in the film include Scott Shepherd as a field reporter, Donald Sumpter as the US government chairman, Tonio Arango as the desert assassin, Stéphane Bak and Aysha Joy Samuel as Radical Freedom militants, and Karl Markovics as a hermit. == Production ==

Development Anderson decided to write a story about the Near East after the death of his father-in-law, Lebanese engineer Fouad Malouf, to whom the film is dedicated. Anderson remembered Malouf as "an amazing kind of larger-than-life figure ... wise and very intelligent, but a little bit scary." He wanted to make a movie where a father "realizes that actually his giant business plan is a ritual, a scheme to get [his daughter]." When Malouf's health began failing, he showed Anderson's wife a series of shoeboxes he had used to organize his files and memories. Anderson adapted the shoeboxes for his film, where Zsa-Zsa Korda uses shoeboxes to organize his business plans. For the character of Zsa-Zsa, Anderson drew on real-life industrialists of the period, saying that he wanted a character who could have "walked out of an Antonioni movie with his sunglasses." Zsa-Zsa's lavish palazzo, fondness for art collecting, and nickname "Mr. Five Percent", are borrowed from Armenian oil magnate Calouste Gulbenkian. In addition, the name, look, and British manner of Zsa-Zsa's brother Nubar are borrowed from Gulbenkian's son Nubar Gulbenkian. (Another influence for Nubar may be the title character of the 1955 film Mr. Arkadin.) Anderson mentioned businessmen Aristotle Onassis, Stavros Niarchos, Gianni Agnelli, and William Randolph Hearst as additional influences. The film's afterlife sequences have been compared to Powell and Pressburger's film A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and the surname Korda may be a reference to the Hungarian-British filmmaker Alexander Korda, who produced many Powell and Pressburger films, though not A Matter of Life and Death itself. Alexandre Desplat returned to compose the score, his seventh collaboration with Anderson. Casting In May 2023, Michael Cera and Benicio del Toro were the first cast members rumored to be part of Wes Anderson's next film. Anderson first talked about the film in June 2023 while promoting Asteroid City, calling it a "three-hander" adventure and saying that it had already been written before the 2023 WGA strike began, working with Roman Coppola. He later said that del Toro was the only actor considered for the role. Bill Murray joined the cast in January 2024. Riz Ahmed was announced as part of the cast in April 2024. In May 2024, Screen Rant reported that F. Murray Abraham joined the cast. The rest of the cast was announced on June 6, 2024, including Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Willem Dafoe, Bryan Cranston, Mia Threapleton, Tonio Arango, Imke Büchel, Imad Mardnli, Jaime Ferkic, Antonia Desplat, Aysha Samuel, and Sabine Hollweck. With the announcement of the release date, it was revealed in February 2025 that Mathieu Amalric and Jeffrey Wright were part of the cast. Threapleton had been a fan of Anderson since she watched Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) when she was eight or nine years old. She landed the role of Sister Liesl after a long audition process that began in May 2023, when she sent Anderson a self-shot audition tape without knowing anything about the character that she would portray. Her tape stood out among over a thousand of auditions that Anderson had watched at that point, "She just seemed like she was in a documentary about the scene. I could see her thoughts. You could tell she was really listening, reacting, thinking about what was happening in front of her. Which isn't always the case", he said. Anderson then asked her to meet with him in London and later for a reading and two-day screen test with del Toro. Both Anderson and del Toro (who plays her character's father in the film) agreed that she should be cast for the role. Del Toro, who endorsed Threapleton after their first reading together, Anderson said that Threapleton already had the role five minutes into the second day of screen test. "And when you saw her read against Benicio... I mean, he's a very imposing figure, and about a foot-and-a-half taller than Mia, for one thing. But if you were to say who seemed to have the power in the relationship in the scenes, you would tend to lean towards the nun." Filming Principal photography began on March 12, 2024, at Babelsberg Studio in Germany, and wrapped on June 3 of the same year. The film was shot using Arricams and an Arriflex 235 with Kodak film stock. Color correction was done by Company3 UK. Anderson, who avoids the usage of chroma key, used an LED screen for the cloud footage outside the plane. French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel shot on 35 mm film, marking his first feature-length collaboration with Anderson. This was the first live-action film to not be shot by his regular cinematographer Robert Yeoman. The film used the unusual 1.5:1 aspect ratio. A few paintings from the Hamburger Kunsthalle also appear, among them one by Floris van Schooten and one by Juriaen Jacobsze. However, some of the paintings used in the film were replicas, including a Rubens. Music ==Release==

In February 2025, Focus Features acquired worldwide rights to the film, with its parent Universal Pictures handling international distribution. The Phoenician Scheme was released theatrically in Germany by Universal Pictures on May 29, 2025, and had a limited theatrical release in the United States on May 30, 2025, before expanding nationwide on June 6, 2025. == Reception ==

Box office , The Phoenician Scheme has grossed $20 million in the United States and Canada, and $19 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $39 million. Tim Grierson of ScreenDaily wrote that while the film "is transporting", "the narrative proves to be fussy rather than delightful." William Bibbiani of TheWrap declared the film "a serious work of art that plays like a boondoggle." Davide Abbatescianni of Cineuropa billed it "another elegant yet forgettable chapter in Anderson's filmography," which "ticks the boxes of visual and narrative quirkiness without delivering any substance." Accolades == References ==