I’d imagine it would be pretty tough to stand out in a Coen Brothers romp, let alone The Big Lebowski—which features about three hall-of-fame performances between Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Steve Buscemi—but John Turturro’s slick bowler, Jesus Quintana, managed to steal a moment or two from the main dudes.
Way back in 2016, we heard that we would get more of Quintana, and that Turturro would write, direct, and star in The Jesus Rolls—a spinoff of The Big Lebowski focused on the bowler and his escape from the law. And over the summer, Screen Media picked up the film’s domestic rights for a 2020 release. Today, the first trailer finally dropped—although it is entirely in Italian, because The Jesus Rolls releases in Italy next month.
Thankfully, the preview is so wonderfully weird—and tonally recognisable in that Coen brothers off-the-rail kind of way—that it hardly needs a translation. Turturro looks like he time-traveled straight from the Lebowski set, licking bowling balls and stuffing stolen bills in his pockets. And the rest of the cast feels right at home in all the zaniness, including Bobby Cannavale, Jon Hamm, Susan Sarandon, Audrey Tautou, and Christopher Walken.
The plot description alone sounds like a caper to remember, per The Hollywood Reporter:
The follow-up centers on a trio of misfits whose irreverent, sexually charged dynamic evolves into a surprising love story as their spontaneous and flippant attitude towards the past or future backfires time and again, even as they inadvertently perform good deeds. When they make enemies with a gun-toting hairdresser, their journey becomes one of constant escape from the law, from society and from the hairdresser, all while the bonds of their outsider family strengthen.
“It’s a bit of a racy movie,” Turturro told The Independent earlier this year about The Jesus Rolls. “It shows how stupid men are. That’s what the movie is kinda about—the women are the stronger, more together characters. I had to tweak it a little bit but now I feel really good about it. It’s basically an exploration of Jesus getting out of jail. It’s a comedy but a very human comedy.”
Tackling male stupidity sound perfect for our current times.
The Jesus Rolls will hit theatres in early 2020.
