He got very close indeed with his transformative turn as a young Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, but could 2026 finally be the year when Timothée Chalamet gets his Academy Award? Well, if we’re going by the first trailer for Marty Supreme, a zippy new period drama about a professional ping pong player, directed by Good Time and Uncut Gems’s Josh Safdie and co-starring none other than Gwyneth Paltrow, it could definitely happen.
Penned by the filmmaker and his frequent collaborator Ronald Bronstein, and co-produced by Chalamet and beloved indie label A24, this forthcoming release is loosely inspired by ping pong player Marty Reisman. Born in 1930s Manhattan, he began playing table tennis on the Lower East Side, competing for bets and prizes, before becoming the US men’s singles champion. His memoir, The Money Player: The Confessions of America’s Greatest Table Tennis Player and Hustler, was published in 1974.
While major plot details remain under wraps, sources close to the production have confirmed that this account of Marty’s rise will be a fictionalised original story, rather than a conventional biopic. With Safdie at the helm, you would, of course, expect nothing else. The log line simply reads: “Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness.”
Alongside Chalamet and Paltrow—as a Hollywood movie star love interest, of course—expect to see the likes of Odessa A’zion, Kevin O’Leary, Abel Ferrara, Fran Drescher, and Tyler, the Creator don their mid-century best, as we look ahead to a Christmas Day release. Let the (inevitably bizarre and brilliant) press tour commence.
This article was first published on Vogue.com.
