Martin McDonagh has made a career of putting great actors in uncomfortable situations and handing them dialogue sharp enough to cut glass. In Wild Horse Nine, he’s raising the stakes—literally—by sending John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell to Easter Island in 1973, on the eve of a CIA-backed coup, and letting the tension simmer until someone inevitably says something unforgivable.
The official poster for the film has arrived, confirming what cinephiles have been anticipating: McDonagh is back, and he’s brought his entire repertory company with him. Malkovich and Rockwell play Chris and Lee, CIA agents dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island shortly before the 1973 Chilean coup that would overthrow Salvador Allende. Their mission is already trust-testing, but add the isolation of Easter Island, the weight of geopolitical history, and McDonagh’s signature brand of jet-black humor, and you have the recipe for something special.
Steve Buscemi joins the cast, because of course he does—Buscemi has become to McDonagh what De Niro was to Scorsese, an essential presence who grounds the absurdity in hard-won reality. Parker Posey and Tom Waits round out the ensemble, suggesting that the film will balance the claustrophobic tension of In Bruges with the ensemble chaos of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
The setting is crucial here. Easter Island—Rapa Nui—is one of the most isolated inhabited places on Earth, famous for its massive stone heads and its history of ecological collapse. Placing a CIA thriller against this backdrop creates immediate thematic resonance: agents of American imperialism confronting the remnants of a civilization that destroyed itself through resource depletion and tribal conflict. If McDonagh doesn’t draw explicit parallels to modern climate anxiety, he’ll be missing an open goal.
The 1973 timeline places the film during one of the darkest chapters of American foreign policy, as the Nixon administration worked to undermine Allende’s democratically elected socialist government. McDonagh has never shied away from political subtext—The Banshees of Inisherin was essentially a metaphor for the Irish Civil War—but Wild Horse Nine appears to be his most explicitly historical work yet.
Post-production is currently underway, with a release expected November 6, 2026. That positions the film squarely in awards season, suggesting that distributor Searchlight Pictures has high hopes for McDonagh’s latest. After the disappointment of Banshees’ Oscar shutout (despite nine nominations), there’s a sense that the Academy owes him one. Whether Wild Horse Nine is the film to collect that debt remains to be seen, but with this cast and this premise, it’s already one of the most anticipated releases of the year.
Mark your calendars—see Wild Horse Nine in theaters November 6, 2026, and witness Martin McDonagh’s most ambitious provocation yet.
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