Italian
Paolo Sorrentino – whose latest film “Parthenope” is scoring record-breaking grosses at the Italian box office – is set to return behind camera to shoot “La Grazia,” a drama that will re-team the Oscar-winning director with “The Great Beauty” actor Toni Servillo.
Plot details of Sorrentino’s next film are being kept under wraps besides the fact that it will be a love story set somewhere in Italy. The title, “La Grazia,” can be translated in English as “Grace.”
Servillo is best known to international audiences for his memorable turn as Roman writer and socialite Jep Gambardella who embarks on a Dantesque descent amid the Eternal City’s grotesque glitterati in “The Great Beauty,” which won the 2014 best international film Oscar.
The Neapolitan actor has appeared in seven of Sorrentino’s 10 feature films to date, starting with his dazzling debut, “One Man Up” in which Servillo played an ageing cocaine-addicted crooner. Besides “The Great Beauty,” among his other lead roles in Sorrentino movies, Servillo has played a heroin-addicted accountant for the mob in Sorrentino’s sophomore film “The Consequences of Love;” controversial Italian politician Giulio Andreotti in “Il Divo;” and media-mogul-turned-politician Silvio Berlusconi in Sorrentino’s “Loro.”
Popular on Variety Written by Sorrentino, “La Grazia” will start filming in Spring 2025 with Annamaria Morelli producing for Fremantle-owned The Apartment – of which Morelli is the chief executive – and by Sorrentino’s own outfit Numero 10, in association with Italy’s PiperFilm. The latter will also be distributing “La Grazia” in Italy.
PiperFilm has been doing gangbuster business at the Italian box office with Sorrentino’s “Parthenope,” the director’s lavish love letter to his native Naples which has now surpassed the €7.4 million ($7.7 million) at the Italian box office since going on release on Oct. 24. These numbers have made it the country’s top local draw of the year to date and Sorrentino’s best box office result in Italy, better than “The Great Beauty.”
A24 will release “Parthenope” in the U.S. on Feb. 7, while Pathé has set Jan. 8 as the film’s French release date.
