Woody Allen is stepping behind the camera once again. The American director presented his next film in Madrid on Thursday, the 51st of his career, which will start shooting on 5 October and will be filmed mainly in the Spanish capital and Aranjuez.
At 90, Allen was joined at the launch by the president of the Madrid region, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida. The project is being financed by both authorities: the City Council and the regional government will each contribute 1.5 million euros, 3 million in total, through sponsorship contracts linked to promoting Madrid. The film has a budget of around 12 million euros, so public support will cover roughly a quarter of the overall cost.
The film, still without a final title and provisionally known as ‘Wasp 2026’, will be a contemporary comedy blending romance, intrigue and infidelity in a diplomatic atmosphere. The cast includes Alexi Wasser, Jemima Kirke, Peter Vives, Marton Csokas and Jakob Oftebro, while much of the technical crew will be Spanish. Filming will run for around six weeks and will span more than 30 locations in Madrid and Aranjuez.
The sponsorship agreement also stipulates that Madrid must appear in the title of the film and that the city should have a clearly recognisable presence on screen. The City Council justifies its contribution as a tool to strengthen Madrid’s international profile as a cultural, tourist and film-making destination.
Allen steers clear of current politics
During the presentation, Allen was also asked about the protests linked to the housing crisis taking place in Madrid. The director declined to comment on the situation, saying he has never seen himself as a filmmaker driven by political causes and that his films have focused mainly on human relationships and existential and romantic questions.
He did say he is “deeply” concerned about the rise of fascism and stressed that he has always opposed it in all its forms, whether in government or in areas such as theatre, censorship or literature.
The new production marks Allen’s return to Spain after works such as ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ and ‘Rifkin’s Festival’. The filmmaker again raised the possibility of retiring. During the event he said making films is exhausting and recalled that he had previously expressed his intention to give up cinema, although the chance to shoot this story in Madrid proved too tempting to refuse.
The controversies that follow Woody Allen
The director’s return to Spain is also bringing renewed attention to the controversies that have defined his public image in recent decades. The main one concerns accusations of sexual abuse made by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, who alleges that Allen abused her in 1992, when she was seven. The filmmaker has repeatedly denied the allegation.
Allen has never been formally charged or tried over these claims. In 1993, Connecticut state prosecutor Frank Maco said there was probable cause to bring charges, but decided not to do so, arguing that putting Dylan Farrow through a court case could harm her. Meanwhile, a team of specialists at the child sexual abuse clinic of Yale-New Haven Hospital concluded after its assessment that Dylan had not been sexually abused. Allen has maintained ever since that the accusation is false.
The controversy flared up again decades later, particularly with the #MeToo movement and following the release in 2021 of the documentary series ‘Allen v. Farrow’. Several Hollywood figures publicly distanced themselves from the filmmaker, and his professional relationship with Amazon ended up before the courts. Allen sued the company for 68 million dollars after it cancelled its agreement to produce several films. The two sides later reached an out-of-court settlement, the terms of which were not made public.
Another widely debated episode in his private life has been his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, the adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and André Previn. The relationship between Allen and Previn became public in 1992, when the filmmaker had long been in a romantic relationship with Farrow. Allen and Previn married in Venice in 1997, when he was 62 and she was 27, a 35-year age gap.