Frank Ocean starts shooting movie with Industry’s David Jonsson

Frank Ocean, that most elusive musical artist, has a new project: he's directing a film. According to Variety, the movie has already begun shooting in Mexico City, and David Jonsson is the lead. Jonsson made waves in HBO's Industry and the charming British rom-com Rye Lane; he was most recently seen in Alien: Romulus. The actor is currently nominated for the 2025 Rising Star Award at this year's BAFTAs, so he's a pretty good get as the lead of Ocean's directorial debut. 

All other details of Ocean's film are under wraps for now, except that it's an independent movie. Rumors circulated last year that Ocean was collaborating with everybody's favorite indie studio-slash-distributor, A24. And entertainment journalist Jeff Sneider reported that Bones And All star Taylor Russell was also set to star in the movie. (Russell previously starred in Waves, an A24 film which was inspired by Ocean and heavily featured his music.) But none of these tidbits about the movie have been officially confirmed. 

What we do know is that the Grammy-award winning singer-songwriter is a big cinephile. In conjunction with his 2016 album Blond, Ocean released a magazine called Boys Don't Cry that featured a long list of his favorite films. Entries included movies from auteurs like Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, Wong Kar-wei, Werner Herzog, David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, and the Coen Brothers. The list ranged from Fritz Lang's M to Annie Hall to Alien. Generally, Ocean's work has been littered with references to movies. And in a 2012 New York Times interview, he spoke about his admiration (or envy) of filmmakers in a way that seems to predict a career behind the camera. "The work is the work. The work is not me," he said. "I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films. Even though it’s my voice, I’m a storyteller."

All that said, news of this latest endeavor will probably have true Ocean fans thinking he'd do anything to avoid releasing new music. Maybe the film will come with an original soundtrack?