Matt Damon in Talks for The Daniels’ Next Film

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Three years after Everything Everywhere All at Once swept the Oscars, The Daniels are finally ready to make their next movie — and they want Matt Damon to anchor it.

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Damon is in talks to star in Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s untitled follow-up at Universal Pictures, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which is also breaking the first real plot details on a project that has been shrouded in secrecy since it was set up at the studio in 2024. A deal isn’t finalized yet, but sources say Damon is very much on board.

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The film is described as involving global warming, time travel, and a possible superhero angle. It unfolds across two timelines — one set in the 1980s and one in the present day — with teenagers as the protagonists, at least in the ’80s-set portion. The Daniels have reportedly been casting those teen roles since 2024, pausing production multiple times while they worked through script and budget challenges. One significant factor behind the delays: the story was originally structured around three time periods before being streamlined to two, which required substantial rewrites.

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Now that Damon is close to locking in, the duo can turn their attention to finding the actor who’ll play his son.

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How Damon Got Here — and Why Gosling Didn’t

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The road to Damon was anything but straightforward. Ryan Gosling was the first big name The Daniels pursued, and he initially agreed to come on board. But Gosling’s role — the father of one of the teen protagonists — was supporting in nature, and he felt it should be larger. He asked for script changes, and the filmmakers weren’t necessarily opposed. The problem was time.

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The project had already pushed its schedule more than once, and it had received a California tax credit that required production to begin by the end of summer or early fall. Another round of rewrites simply wasn’t possible within that window. So in the span of a week or two, Gosling was in and then out. Jack Black was briefly considered before The Daniels pivoted to Damon.

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The pivot makes a lot of sense on paper. Damon is already a known quantity at Universal — not just from the Bourne franchise, but as the lead of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the studio’s massive summer tentpole opening July 17. After a grueling six-month shoot on that film, sources say Damon wasn’t in a hurry to jump back into work. He planned to rest, spend time with his family, and take his time reading scripts. But when The Daniels came calling, and after a meeting with the duo, he gave the thumbs up.

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The plan is for Damon to shoot the film in Los Angeles after he wraps his promotional commitments for The Odyssey.

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The Weight of Following Everything Everywhere

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It’s hard to overstate the pressure on this project. Everything Everywhere All at Once didn’t just win seven Oscars in 2023 — it became a cultural phenomenon, the kind of film that people pressed into friends’ hands and rewatched in tears. Following that up, at a bigger studio with a bigger budget, is a genuinely daunting task.

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The Daniels have been working on this project for three years, navigating challenges of budget, script, and now casting. The film has already been dated for November 19, 2027, which gives some sense of Universal’s confidence in it as an event release. The California Film Commission approved it for $20.8 million in tax credits based on $106 million in qualified spending — the most projects ever approved in a single application window for the state’s program.

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Kwan, Scheinert, and producer Jonathan Wang will produce through their Playgrounds banner, which operates under an overall deal with Universal. The trio previously produced The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist for Focus Features. Universal’s Sara Scott and Jacqueline Garell are overseeing the project for the studio.

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When the California tax credit was announced, The Daniels and Wang spoke about what the program meant to them. “We are L.A. filmmakers, with very dear L.A. friends, who happen to be some of the greatest creative talents we’ve worked with,” they said in a joint statement. “On Everything Everywhere All At Once we received the California tax credit, and had we not, it would have been utterly impossible to make that film.”

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For now, the rest of the cast remains to be built. The ensemble is expected to skew younger, with most roles going to actors who will audition — but Damon at the center gives Universal and The Daniels the star power they need to anchor what they’re clearly positioning as their next big swing.

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“category”: “Movies