Mike Leigh already has eyes on his next project

Mike Leigh is getting behind the camera to break your heart all over again sometime this year. The acclaimed director has set his next project with longtime collaborator Bleecker Street, per Deadline. Not much else is known about the film as of this writing; it's currently going by the placeholder "Untitled 2025," with additional production support from Cornerstone, Studiocanal, and Film4.

Leigh's latest film, Hard Truths, follows Pansy (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a bitter housewife who takes out her consternation on her husband, son, and everyone around her until she finally snaps. "Hard Truths is another fine chapter in a remarkable career, a movie where a veteran filmmaker is still engaging with challenging situations in ways that feel documentary in their precision and operatic in their scope," Jason Gorber wrote in his review of the film for The A.V. Club. 

Multiple awards bodies agreed. The New York Film Critics Circle, LA Film Critics Circle and National Society of Film Critics all gave Jean-Baptiste their Best Actress award, as did the Denver Film Festival, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the British Independent Film Awards, and the Toronto Film Critics Association.The film also received Best Original Screenplay from the National Board of Review, and BAFTA nominations for both Outstanding British Film and Best Actress. Still, it became one of the films completely overlooked by the Academy this year. 

There's also a sad update for the next project, which is that cinematographer and longtime Leigh collaborator Dick Pope won't be involved. Pope died last October, the same month Hard Truths released in theaters. Pope and Leigh began working together in 1990 on Life Is Sweet, and enjoyed a 34-year professional relationship after that. "The final 'look' of a movie is very much in the hands of the cinematographer, and Dick’s skills at this stage of post-production were those of a consummate artist. To sit with him in a grading session was always a revelation and a joy, and his final results were a privilege to share," Leigh wrote in a tribute to his friend in The Guardian. "I will miss Dick Pope for his passion for life, his impeccable good taste, his healthy anarchic outlook, his dry sense of humour, and for our shared passion for all things gastronomic, especially Chinese restaurants and oysters."