Here’s a tongue twister for your Thursday morning: Can you picture Pepper Potts in a ping pong picture? Because per Variety‘s reporting, Pepper Potts actor Gwyneth Paltrow is very soon to appear in a ping pong picture — namely, Josh Safdie’s upcoming A24 joint Marty Supreme. In what will be her first big screen appearance since 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, Paltrow is set to star alongside Timothée Chalamet in Safdie’s solo directorial debut, which has been written by the Good Time co-director alongside regular Safdies collaborator Ronald Bronstein.
We still don’t know as of yet who Paltrow — or Chalamet for that matter — will be playing in the movie just yet, though it would seem logical to assume the Wonka star might be taking on the title role in Safdie’s sports movie. And whilst plot details are scarce at this stage for Marty Supreme, we do at least know — as per our previous reporting — that whilst the expectation is that this film will tell a fictionalised story, it’s also said to be one that centres around the very much non-fictional American ping pong legend Marty Reisman. Vaunted as “the wizard of table tennis”, Reisman won an astonishing 22 major ping pong titles in a career that spanned over six decades, rising from hustling bets on the streets of New York to hanging with the Harlem Globetrotters in a stranger-than-fiction true story of sporting genius. As far as figures ripe for a feature focus go, you’d struggle to find many more fascinating than Marty Reisman.
We’ve no word up til now on when we might expect to see Marty Supreme hit our screens — and with Chalamet already booked and busy with a certain upcoming Dune: Messiah looming on the horizon, it may be a wee while yet before we’re all going ping pong mad at the movies just yet. But if we weren’t already buzzing about the prospect of a Chalamet x Safdie x A24 team-up before (which we absolutely were), then bringing in an Oscar winner of Paltrow’s calibre surely seals the deal. And while we wait for Marty Supreme, we still heartily recommend checking out Leo Leigh’s Reisman doc Fact Or Fiction, which you can watch for free on the filmmaker’s website. Cho!