Damien Chazelle released from “movie jail” to direct a movie about real jail

Damien Chazelle was released from “movie jail” this afternoon after serving two years for the crime of directing Babylon. At CinemaCon, Paramount Pictures announced Damien Chazelle’s next movie would release in 2025. Ironically enough, it’s a movie about prison.

Few bombs explode quite like Babylon did in 2022. Maybe it’s because the movie opens with a gaping elephant anus defecating right to the camera. Perhaps the only way to read such a shot is by assuming that its director, Damien Chazelle, is taking a dump on the audience. It’s not a great way to ingratiate viewers into a world where Brad Pitt goes on tangents about Hollywood every five minutes, but it didn’t matter either. Audiences stayed away from Babylon. Far away. Like the other side of the planet away. The movie failed to recoup its budget and couple that with derision from critics and awards voters, and suddenly Twitter users are calling Margot Robbie box office poison. What a difference six months makes.

No one’s career took a harder hit than director Damien Chazelle, though. After two promising Oscar contenders, Whiplash and La La Land, and an offbeat spaceman drama, First Man, it looked like Chazelle would be out of the movie game for a while. Movie jail, where the likes of Francis Ford Coppola and Michael Cimino spent large swaths of their careers, is a typical punishment for having the gall to release a flop, and Chazelle thought he was going to do time or at least get some parole. Last month, he told the Talking Pictures podcast that he might not be able to get another movie made.

“I’ve been head in the sand. I’ve been sort of busy writing. So I’ll get a real taste of how it’s changed or not once I get to finish this script and try to actually get it made,” Chazelle said. “I’m in a sort of trepidatious state of mind, but I have no illusions. I won’t get a budget of Babylonsize any time soon, or at least not on this next one.”

Of course, Paramount and Chazelle are locked together by an overall deal he signed with the studio just ahead of Babylon’s release. Chazelle wrote the new movie, but that doesn’t really tell us much about it, except that one of the characters will probably be obsessed with jazz.