New Details Emerge About Woody Allen's Upcoming French Film

In 2021, it was starting to seem that Woody Allenwould never work in the industry again.

A four-part docu-series called “Allen v. Farrow” premiered on HBO, which documented the sexual abuse allegations against the filmmaker involving Dylan, his then 7-year-old daughter with actress Mia Farrow.

On June 28, Allen teamed up with another controversial figure – “Rust” actor Alec Baldwin – to take part in a 55-minute Instagram Live interview which can be seen at the bottom of this article. During the interview, the veteran filmmaker said he had plans to make one or two more movies.

On Tuesday morning, Deadline reported that Allen had spoken with the French Sunday paper Le Journal du Dimanche, and explained that the movie that he plans to shoot in Paris this fall may be the last film he makes. Allen said that he plans to move to Paris in September to create his newest movie, which he described as a French-language thriller.

Allen is no stranger to filming in Paris. Over a decade ago, he filmed 2011’s fantasy romance “Midnight in Paris” there. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The 86-year-old filmmaker compared his new movie to the plot of his 2005 film “Match Point” and called it “a sort of poisonous romantic thriller.” Although no one has been publicly attached to the project just yet, Woody Allen says that he has already found his principal actors for his new movie.

During his interview with “30 Rock” actor Alec Baldwin, Allen explained that his movie, although filmed in Paris, is being financed out of the United States. He told Baldwin that his upcoming movie “will be my 50th feature” and “might be the last one.”

Woody Allen’s most recent film premiered at the Rifkin’s Festival and grossed more than $2.3 million dollars. It had a limited release in the United States earlier this year but failed to make an impact due to his reputation. Although Amazon Studios had originally agreed to handle the release, MPI Media Group stepped in after Amazon Studios backed out of its $80 million dollar distribution deal that they had signed in 2019.

The French newspaper specifically asked Allen if he was afraid that he would no longer be able to make movies due to the sexual assault allegations. “I am an author and no one can prevent me from writing, and therefore from working,” Allen responded. “It is the guarantee of my freedom and of my independence.”

Allen doesn't see himself making many more movies, not due to the allegations against him, but because he claimed that the “thrill is gone” due to a decrease in movie attendance. Allen believes that this started long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When I started, you’d do a film and it would go into a movie house and movie houses all over the country, and people would come by the hundreds to watch it in big groups on a big screen,” he recalled. “Now, you do a movie and you get a couple of weeks in a movie house, maybe six weeks, four weeks, whatever. And then it goes right to streaming or right to pay-per-view, and people love sitting home with their big screens and watching it on their television sets.”

“It’s not as enjoyable to me,” he added.

However, he does see an upside to taking time off from making movies: creating his own schedule.

“I don’t have to be cold in the winter or hot in the summer or up at 5 o’clock in the morning, making decisions all day long. I’m home and there’s nothing I can do but exercise, practice the clarinet and write. I was home writing a lot. I wrote a lot of plays. … I thought to myself, ‘What if I didn’t make film? This is a nice way to live.’ And I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’ll make one or two more.'”

Although he has written screenplays for others to direct in the past, Woody Allen revealed that he doesn't want to make screenplays he won't direct himself. Instead, he would prefer to write his own novels that he would publish on his own. Allen originally had a deal with book publisher Hachette to publish his memoir in 2020, but it was canceled due to the sexual assault allegations.

The full hour-long interview with Alec Baldwin is available to watch on his Instagram page and can be viewed in the video below.