Ruben Östlund's ‘The Entertainment System Is Down' starts principal photography

Ruben Östlund has begun principal photography in Budapest for his upcoming film The Entertainment System Is Down and has revealed further cast for the dark satire.

The film is set on a long-haul flight between England and Australia where the entertainment system fails and passengers are forced to face the horror of being bored.

Principal photography is taking place in Budapest over a 70-day period from January to May 2025. The set has been built around a real Boeing 747, which was acquired specifically for the project.

Connor Swindells, Daniel Webber, Wayne Blair, Dan Wyllie, Lindsay Duncan, Allan Corduner, Sofia Tjelta Sydness, Erin Ainsworth, Myles Kamwendo, Sanna Sundqvist and Tea Stjärne, and Swedish artist Benjamin Ingrosso have joined the cast.

Confirmed cast already includes Kirsten Dunst, Daniel Brühl, Keanu Reeves, Nicholas Braun, Samantha Morton and Tobias Menzies.

The Entertainment System is Down is produced by Plattform Produktion (Sweden) with Essential Films (Germany) and Parisienne de Production (France). Co-producers are BBC Film, Film i Väst, Sveriges Television, ZDF/ARTE, ARTE France Cinéma, SF Studios, Eye Eye Pictures (Norway), Paloma Productions (Denmark). The film is financed by the Swedish Film Institute, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA), the Norwegian Film Institute, the Danish Film Institute, with the participation of Canal+, Disney+ and ARTE France and with the support of Creative Europe MEDIA.

World sales are handled by Coproduction Office, and a first deal with A24 for US distribution rights has already been announced.

The project will mark Östlund’s second English-language film and seventh feature after The Guitar Mongoloid (2004), Involuntary (2008), Play (2011), Force Majeure (2014), and his two Palme d’Or winners, The Square (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022).

This story originally appeared on KFTV's sister site Screen