Here’s Why Wes Anderson’s Next Two Films Aren’t at Searchlight

With seven nominations to his name, perennial Oscar contender Wes Anderson can call his own shots.

It helps that he’s one of Hollywood’s most visually creative auteurs.

Since 2012’s “Moonrise Kingdom,” which Focus Features released, Searchlight has distributed all of Anderson’s features, from his biggest global hit in 2014, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and 2018’s stop-motion “Isle of Dogs” (59 million in 2018) to 2021’s “The French Dispatch” (45.6 million worldwide) which delayed its Cannes world premiere by a year due to the pandemic and also relied, like everyone else, on online revenues.So why did Anderson return to Focus for his latest star-crammed comedy ensemble, “Asteroid City” (2023), an original “poetic meditation on the meaning of life” co-written with his usual collaborator Roman Coppola? This time Anderson returns to a fictional American locale, setting the 1955 story at a desert town’s Junior Stargazer convention, which pulls in student competitors and their parents from across the country.

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