Watch The Trailer For Sparks’ Forthcoming Rock Opera, ‘Annette’ Directed By Leos Carax

Sparks has teamed up with the award-winning director Leos Carax (Holy Motors, Boy Meets Girl) to create a rock opera penned by the boundary-pushing group.

Ron and Russell Mael, the two brothers behind the long-running art-pop trio Sparks, wrote the new film Annette, which stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard and which will be the English-language debut from Leos Carax. The movie’s first trailer arrived today and can be viewed below.

Annette will be Carax’s first film since his surreal, fragments 2012 masterpiece Holy Motors, and it’s also his first musical. The Mael brothers have said that 95 percent of the film’s words will be sung, not spoken. Annette will open this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and it’ll run in competition for the festival’s Palme D’Or prize. After a pandemic-related postponement, the festival is now set to begin on July 6.

Amazon has the US rights to distribute Annette, which tells the story of a celebrity couple and of the arrival of their child. Annette will be the second Sparks-related feature to debut at a major film festival this year. Back in January, Edgar Wright’s new documentary The Sparks Brothers premiered at the virtual version of the Sundance Film Festival.

The trailer comes on the heels of Sparks announcing rescheduled tour dates. Ron and Russell Mael said, “We are thrilled to finally announce the rescheduled dates for Sparks’ European tour. We thank everyone who already has tickets for the shows for being so patient and understanding. Happily, we’ll be at all the same cities and venues as originally planned, AND, we’ve also added 5 new concerts in Germany, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. And soon we’ll be announcing our North American tour dates! So, dust off your duds and clear your larynxes―we can’t wait to see you all in concert!”

Listen to the best of Sparks on Apple Music and Spotify.