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Jesse Eisenberg is back behind the camera for his third directing outing after “A Real Pain” and “When You Finish Saving the World,” “The Debut.” The A24 film stars Julianne Moore as a shy, nervous woman who’s unexpectedly cast in a local community theater production, only to fall under the sway (and, based on this trailer, mental tyranny) of an enigmatic and strong-tempered director, played by Paul Giamatti. Watch the film’s first trailer below.
The film also stars Halle Bailey, Cara Buono, Craig Bierko, Eldar Isgandarov, Eisenberg himself, and — fitting for a movie about stage shows — Bernadette Peters. It’s produced by Fruit Tree’s Emma Stone, Dave McCary, and Ali Herting, alongside Eisenberg.
As the trailer tells us, the pleasantly diffident Mona (Moore) is thrown way out of orbit following an audition for a musical show. “I haven’t sung in front of anyone since church choir.” So she’s clearly out of practice, too. Jerry (Giamatti) is “basically the biggest name in New Jersey community theater; he’s brilliant, but not here to be your friend.” A pas de deux appears to ensue between Mona and Jerry, who is pushing her aggressively toward a more brilliant performance while her life spirals out of control.
“I write all sorts of things. Most are unpublished, unproduced, like most people, maybe,” Eisenberg told me during an IndieWire interview circa “A Real Pain.” He continued, “I have a higher batting average as an actor, so I have an agent and everything, so it gives me a little bit of a shortcut, but everything informs something else. I wrote a musical 15 years ago, and it never got produced, and the next movie I’m making takes place in the world of community theater [working off his Susan Sarandon-starring play ‘Happy Talk’], and I’m able to repurpose music that I wrote. [When] you’re desperate to produce something, you figure out whatever it is that you have in you that you could take advantage of in terms of previous things that actually informed this.”
Set amid a Holocaust heritage tour, Eisenberg’s 2024 buddy comedy “A Real Pain” earned Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay. Kieran Culkin won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award in 2025 — more than a year after the movie first premiered at Sundance, where it was acquired by Searchlight Pictures for $10 million. “The Debut” marks Eisenberg’s second collaboration with A24 after “When You Finish Saving the World,” which also starred Julianne Moore.
A24 has yet to set a release date for “The Debut,” but you should surely look out for the film this fall and during the season’s festivals.
English (US) ·