Paul Dano Boards A-List Film Days After Quentin Tarantino Clash
Paul Dano boards Florian Zeller’s psychological thriller Bunker, teaming with Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Stephen Graham — and the move lands just days after Quentin Tarantino criticized his There Will Be Blood performance.
Well-timed news drop: Paul Dano just boarded Florian Zeller's new psychological thriller 'Bunker' a few days after Quentin Tarantino lit him up over 'There Will Be Blood.' The timing is not subtle.
What 'Bunker' is actually about
'Bunker' follows an architect who takes a morally messy job building a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire. While he digs into that, his wife starts rethinking their marriage after 17 years. So, ethically gray work collides with a long-term relationship hitting a crossroads. Not cheery. Very Zeller.
Who is making this, and why that matters
Florian Zeller is writing and directing. This is his third feature after 'The Father' (2020) and 'The Son' (2022). Zeller and his co-writer Christopher Hampton won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for 'The Father,' which is a fancy way of saying he knows how to mine uncomfortable family dynamics and make them feel scarily real.
The cast, the shoot, the nuts and bolts
- Cast so far: Paul Dano, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Stephen Graham, Patrick Schwarzenegger
- Status: In its second week of filming
- Where: Shooting between Madrid and London
- Producers: Blue Morning Pictures and MOD Producciones
Why Dano, according to Zeller
Zeller says he has been impressed with Dano across the board, from 'Little Miss Sunshine' to 'There Will Be Blood,' and calls him genuinely one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable. Translation: Dano's not there to blend in; he's there to tilt the movie's energy in a specific way.
About that Tarantino blowtorch
Days before this casting hit, Tarantino went on a podcast and tore into Dano's 'There Will Be Blood' performance opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. He argued the role needed a stronger counterweight, even tossing out Austin Butler as someone he thinks would have been better. He also threw around phrases like 'weak sauce' and 'weak sister' and basically said Day-Lewis ate Dano alive.
'The weakest f---ing actor in SAG.'
That take did not land quietly. A bunch of folks who have actually worked with Dano or alongside him spoke up in his corner, including 'The Batman' director Matt Reeves, writer Mattson Tomlin, actor Simu Liu, and 'There Will Be Blood' alum Dillon Freasier. Safe to say the industry consensus is not what Tarantino pitched.
Bottom line
Dano stepping into a morally fraught Zeller thriller right as people are debating his chops is, frankly, perfect. If 'Bunker' is anything like Zeller's last two films, it is going to lean hard into discomfort, performance duels, and the kind of choices that split audiences down the middle. Sounds like the right arena for Dano to let the work speak for itself.