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Martin McDonagh's 'Wild Horse Nine' Premieres to Standing Ovation
· Confirmed
In Short: Martin McDonagh's latest film, 'Wild Horse Nine,' premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2026, receiving a 13-minute standing ovation.
McDonagh, known for his sharp dialogue and dark humor, wrote and directed 'Wild Horse Nine,' which blends character-driven tension with his signature offbeat tone.
'Wild Horse Nine' marks McDonagh's latest feature following 'The Banshees of Inisherin,' which received several Academy Award nominations.
McDonagh explained that the film's inspiration came from a song by The Clash, which led him to think about the CIA's involvement in Chile.
McDonagh's previous films, such as 'In Bruges,' have also featured two shady characters in a beautiful setting, playing out a violent, bleakly comic endgame.
Background
Martin McDonagh's dark comedy thriller 'Wild Horse Nine' premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2026, receiving an 13-minute standing ovation.
Wild Horse Nine is a 2026 black comedy political thriller film written and directed by Martin McDonagh. A co-production of the United Kingdom, United States, and Chile, it stars John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Mariana di Girolamo, Ailín Salas, Tom Waits, and Parker Posey.
What's confirmed
- McDonagh’s signature dark humor and sharp dialogue are all there, but that familiarity doesn’t stop Wild Horse Nine from being one of the year’s best films.
- McDonagh's detractors won’t find anything new in Wild Horse Nine, his latest melancholic spy thriller about a male friendship at odds.
What's still developing
- Wild Horse Nine premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2026, where it received a reported 13-minute standing ovation.
- Angelina Jolie reunited with actor John Malkovich at a special screening of Wild Horse Nine in Los Angeles on Monday, November 2 at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood, where she was seen greeting photographers before heading inside for the event.
- “It was the Moai and the mystery of those heads that made me first visit the place around 15 years ago, but the beauty of the island, the fact that it’s so far away from anywhere else on Earth, and that there are all these wild horses roaming around made me think it could be a great character in a movie,” explains McDonagh, who wrote and directed the film.
- But that decision is a double-edged sword that cuts the film off at the knees.
- From there, conspiracies from Chris’s past begin to surface.
- Set shortly before 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, Wild Horse Nine begins in Santiago, where veteran operative Chris (Malkovich) and his protege Lee (Rockwell) have put things in motion to destabilize the newly democratically elected leader.
- As Chris records his memoirs, which he pronounces “mem-wahs” in homage to Malkovich’s role as a similarly unhinged CIA agent in “Burn After Reading,” Malkovich’s idiosyncratic cadence paired with McDonagh’s script conjures both wisdom and an unexpected naivete.
- In “Wild Horse Nine,” director Martin McDonagh and an exceptional cast offer smirking profundity that provokes as much laughter as it does contemplation.
- The premise is classic McDonagh, whose “In Bruges” similarly observes the partnership of two hitmen.
- “I’ve been thinking about what the CIA did in Chile since my teens. It all came from a song by The Clash on their Sandinista. album from 1980 called Washington Bullets,” says McDonagh, 56.