Trivia / The French Dispatch

• All-Star Cast: As with Wes Anderson's previous films, the film has a hilariously large cast of big names (perhaps his biggest yet), even counting those who just show up for cameos. They're more easily sorted by segment:
  • "The French Dispatch office": Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Elisabeth Moss, Jason Schwartzman, Fisher Stevens, Griffin Dunne, Anjelica Huston (narrator), Jarvis Cocker.
  • "The Concrete Masterpiece – by J.K.L. Berensen": Tilda Swinton, Benicio del Toro, Tony Revolori, Adrien Brody, Léa Seydoux, Lois Smith, Henry Winkler, Bob Balaban.
  • "Revisions to a Manifesto – by Lucinda Krementz": Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Alex Lawther, Rupert Friend, Cécile de France, Guillaume Gallienne, Christoph Waltz.
  • "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner – by Roebuck Wright": Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Liev Schreiber, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Hippolyte Girardot.
• Creator-Driven Successor: To The Grand Budapest Hotel. Both movies consist in a Period Pieces set in a fictional place, focused on a specific workplace, and told as a Nested Story. Both are a mixture of romance, comedy, and drama. They also share a director and most of the cast. The only major difference is that The Grand Budapest Hotel isn't an Anthology Film.
• The Danza: Jeffrey Wright as Roebuck Wright.
• Production Posse: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, Tony Revolori, Saoirse Ronan, Tilda Swinton, Anjelica Huston, Adrien Brody, Bob Balaban, Mathieu Amalric and Léa Seydoux have appeared in previous Wes Anderson films. In particular, most of them were in the already large cast of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Composer Alexandre Desplat also returns for his fifth collaboration with Anderson.
• Release Date Change: The film was set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 12, 2020 and get a wide release on July 24, but due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the festival was cancelled and the film was pulled from the schedule. It was then rescheduled for release on October 16, 2020, only to be pulled from the schedule again. It was eventually debuted at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and was released on October 22, 2021.
• Those Two Actors:
  • Rather those three actors. It's the second film of 2021 to have Léa Seydoux, Christoph Waltz and Jeffrey Wright in its cast after No Time to Die (which released the same month). They're all in separate stories, however.
  • Seydoux and Waltz were also previously in Inglourious Basterds and Spectre.
  • Mathieu Amalric and Hippolyte Girardot, after Kings & Queen, A Christmas Tale, Bird People, Ismael's Ghosts and the French dub of Isle of Dogs.
  • This is also the third film to have both Saoirse Ronan and Timothée Chalamet in its cast, after Lady Bird and Little Women, though they appear in separate stories.
• What Could Have Been: Kate Winslet was reported to have joined the cast early on, but later dropped out to focus more on her role in Ammonite, which also happened to star Saoirse Ronan.

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