'The thrill is gone': Woody Allen says his 50th film could be his last

Alec Baldwin interviewed Woody Allen live on Instagram Live (listed by Roskomnadzor in the register of banned sites). The 86-year-old director said that his next, 50th, film will be shot in the autumn in Paris and, most likely, will be his last. “I almost lost my passion,” Allen was quoted as saying by France24.

According to the director, he is not too interested in making a movie, knowing in advance that in two weeks of film distribution it will leave the big screen for streaming platforms: “It's not as exciting as making a movie for a movie. Knowing that 500 people are watching you at the same time is a very special feeling.”

Allen also said he managed to avoid contracting covid through a combination of luck and caution: "When the pandemic started, I was in my house petrified like everyone else and hiding under my bed." According to the director, he even managed to find certain advantages in his new position, although at first he regretted that the lockdown prevented him from filming the next project: “I thought: gee, I like it under the bed. No need to go outside, no need to shoot a movie, and I'm cold in the winter and hot in the summer, and I make decisions all day."

During the lockdown, the director wrote a new book of short stories, Zero Gravity, which has just been published, and a play that is planned to be staged. When asked by Baldwin about the current state of the theater, Allen criticized Broadway, saying that "all productions are musicals, and you must definitely engage a star, and they cost millions of dollars."

Woody Allen's last two films were A Rainy Day in New York (2019) and The Rifkin Festival (2021). Both came out during the pandemic, and if the latter was not so successful by all accounts, the former topped the box office charts for a while.