Adrien Brody and Rachel Zegler are preparing to take on roles in ‘Last Dance,’ a new father-daughter drama from Brazilian filmmaker and Cannes favorite Karim Aïnouz.

Brody, a two-time Oscar winner most recently honored for ‘The Brutalist,’ will star opposite Zegler, the Golden Globe-winning breakout of ‘West Side Story.’ The project marks Brody’s first known film role since winning his second Best Actor Oscar, giving Last Dance immediate awards-season intrigue.

The film also adds a major musical component. Ben Platt, the Tony, Emmy, and Grammy-winning star of Dear Evan Hansen, will co-star and write original music for the movie. Zegler, fresh from her Olivier-winning performance in ‘Evita,’ will sing original songs, bringing the story’s Broadway backdrop directly into the emotional fabric of the film.

Written by Emily Ziff Griffin, the screenplay is based on her 2021 autobiographical New Yorker essay, “The Last Dance with My Dad.” The story is set in 1991 and follows Elliot, a celebrated Broadway composer played by Brody, who invites his daughter Emma, played by Zegler, on a gay cruise through the Caribbean.

For Emma, the trip is an awakening. She steps into a dazzling, liberated world of music, celebration, and chosen family, where she is the only straight woman on board and unexpectedly falls for a young crew member. But beneath the glamour and abandon of the voyage, the AIDS crisis looms.

As Elliot pulls away from the brutal reality of his illness, the cruise becomes more than an escape. It becomes a reckoning. Father and daughter are forced to confront everything they have avoided saying to each other, with the clock running down on the time they have left together.

Fifth Season and 51 Entertainment, led by Oscar-nominated Academy president Lynette Howell Taylor, are producing the film, with Griffin also serving as executive producer. FilmNation Entertainment will launch international sales at the upcoming Cannes market, while Fifth Season and CAA Media Finance Group are handling domestic rights.

FilmNation CEO Glen Basner called Griffin’s remembrance of her father and unconventional upbringing both intensely specific and universally resonant. He said Last Dance will vividly recreate 1990s New York, capturing the joy, sorrow, music, and heartbreak of the era while telling a deeply moving story about a father and daughter trying to find each other before the music fades.

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