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Film Twitter got together and dreamed up the very real forthcoming release from A24. Mother Mary stars internet faves Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, is directed by Ghost Story and The Green Knight’s David Lowery, and is soundtracked with original music by Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX. Safe to say, it’s going to be a weird one. Here’s everything we know about the movie that acted as a reawakening for Hathaway’s voice and is definitely not the fever dream of a gay teenager obsessed with Eusexua and Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Who is Mother Mary?
Mother Mary is the titular pop star, played by Hathaway. In a moment of crisis, she reunites with an old friend who helped craft her persona, played by Coel. The movie is largely made up of their conversations in a barn, according to Hathaway’s July Vogue cover story, and the plot, to the level that one exists, revolves around the creation of a dress. There are also “demented” flashbacks and concert scenes where Mother Mary performs.
So is Anne Hathaway really performing?
She took two years of dance classes for the project, which were apparently grueling. “My body was so locked up — I literally couldn’t take a deep breath,” Hathaway told Vogue. “I’d been trying to open that space for years and I thought it was physically impossible. All my breath, it was stuck …” The audience will get to see the payoff of Hathaway’s newfound breathing in Mother Mary’s concert scenes and in one scene where she dances alone in the barn. “The physicality she had to learn in preparation for this job — and it’s not just us in the barn, it’s the crew, it’s the producers, and so of course this day was terrifying, a little monster on her shoulder, but no one realized until after the first take,” Coel told Vogue of the solo dance scene. “And then to keep doing it — take after take. That requires a lot of strength. Gallons and tons.”
She’ll also be singing louder and lower than ever before — during a voice lesson for the role, Hathaway learned that she’s not a soprano. “My mom’s a soprano— a beautiful singer,” she told Vogue, before playing a low note and saying “It turns out, I’m down here. That’s where I like to live.” When recording her songs, she screamed like, by her own description, “hounds of hell.”
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What is the music like?
Mother Mary’s music in the film is written by Charli XCX and Jack Antonoff in their first collaboration. The music was written after filming, so the sound was based, at least partially, on Hathaway’s solo barn dance. “Anne’s movement was super graphic, very thrashing and jerky and bold in this super magical and scary way,” Charli told Vogue. “It felt volatile and gripping, so Jack and I went away and thought about that.”
Who is in the cast?
Aside from Hathaway and Coel, the film features Hunter Schafer as Mother Mary’s assistant. They star alongside Kaia Gerber, Downton Abbey’s Jessica Brown Findlay, Fleabag’s Sian Clifford, and FKA Twigs in parts that are still unclear. What we do know is that the entire cast is very close — choreographer Dani Vitale said filming was like Lowery “started a cult by accident.”
Have we seen anything yet?
A24 released a first look at Mother Mary alongside a first look at Celine Song’s The Materialists in November 2024. The photo shows Hathaway bedecked in gold, reminiscent of Beyoncé’s 2017 Grammys performance. Meanwhile, Vogue described the character as “a sort of Gaga–Taylor Swift hybrid.” Anyone curious about what that sounds like can listen to “How Bad Do U Want Me” — the very Swiftian sounding track off Gaga’s newest album Mayhem.
When does it come out?
There is no release date for the movie yet. Back in August 2024, Lowery told the podcast The Last Video Store that “I’m in the edit right now, and I have been wondering, What is this movie?” adding that “I know what I set out to make, and that is indeed what I’ve made, but it is so wild. It is a movie I am sure will provoke a lot of strong feelings in every possible direction.” That’s the last update that Lowery has yet given. Show us the barn!
