Warner Bros Pictures has acquired Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language feature debut, The Room Next Door, for release in a host of key international markets including the filmmaker’s home turf of Spain.
Other markets to figure in the deal are the UK, Germany, Italy, the Nordics, Central & Eastern Europe (excluding Poland), Latin America and some of Asia-Pacific, including Japan.
Starring Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton and John Turturro, The Room Next Door follows the story of a very imperfect mother and a spiteful daughter separated by a serious misunderstanding. Between them, another woman, Ingrid (Moore), the mother’s friend and an auto fiction novelist, is the keeper of their pain and bitterness. Martha, the mother (Swinton), is a war reporter.
The film is described as addressing the endless cruelty of war, and the very different ways in which the two female authors approach and write about reality, death, friendship and sexual pleasure as the best allies in the fight against horror.
Further description says the movie “evokes the sweet awakening with the chirping of birds, in a house built in the middle of a nature reserve in New England, where the two friends live in an extreme and strangely sweet situation.”
Produced by Almodóvar’s El Deseo, The Room Next Door was shot between Madrid and New York, with the support of Movistar Plus+. Also featuring in the cast are Alessandro Nivola, Juan Diego Botto, Raúl Arévalo, Melina Mathews and Victoria Luengo, among others.
The Room Next Door, which is due to hit cinemas later this year, will be Almodóvar’s first feature-length project since 2021’s Parallel Mothers, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival where Penelope Cruz won the Best Actress Volpi Cup for her role in the film.
Earlier this year, Almodovar’s frequent collaborators at Sony Pictures Classics acquired North America, the Middle East, India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.