Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine is set for a direct path through two of the most contested stops on the fall festival circuit. Toronto confirmed a Canadian premiere in Special Presentations on August 12, after the film was already locked into the Golden Lion competition at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, where it screens September 3.
The film brings Sam Rockwell back for his third McDonagh collaboration, following Seven Psychopaths and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, where Rockwell won Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. This time he plays Lee, a CIA operative paired with veteran agent Chris, played by John Malkovich. Steve Buscemi plays their bureau chief MJ. Tom Waits and Parker Posey round out the ensemble, with Chilean actors Mariana Di Girolamo and Ailín Salas as two students at the center of the story's complications.
The film is set in the days before Chile's 1973 coup. Chris and Lee are dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island, where the moai become the backdrop for a confrontation between the two agents' troubled history and a present conspiracy. Chris's bond with the students threatens to collapse both the mission and the partnership.
Blueprint Pictures produced alongside Film4, with cinematography by Ben Davis and a score from Carter Burwell, who composed Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Searchlight Pictures distributes. Wild Horse Nine runs 118 minutes and is set for theatrical release in November 2026. It will be McDonagh's first feature since The Banshees of Inisherin in 2022.