Patricia Highsmith gave the world Tom Ripley, Carol, and some of the most unsettling psychological fiction ever written. Now Helen Mirren is giving the world Patricia Highsmith, and the trailer just arrived.
A Talent for Murder opens in theaters via Bleecker Street on October 23, 2026, and plays at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. Director Anton Corbijn (The American, Control) directs from a screenplay by Joanna Murray-Smith.
A callow young literary agent from New York travels to Switzerland with one mission: persuade the reclusive Patricia Highsmith to write one final installment of the Ripley anthology. What unfolds is a “smouldering chamber thriller”, TIFF’s own description, that imagines a strange, charged confrontation between the two. Highsmith’s novels were the source material for Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. Putting her on screen as a character rather than a subject is a genuinely bold idea, and Mirren is the only person in Hollywood who could pull it off.
The Cast
Alden Ehrenreich (Weapons, Solo: A Star Wars Story) plays the literary agent. Olivia Cooke (House of the Dragon, Ready Player One) also stars. The film is rated R for sexual content and violence, which, for a film about the woman who wrote some of the 20th century’s most psychologically disturbing fiction, feels exactly right.
Bleecker Street CEO Kent Sanderson described the project as “a captivating ode to not only Highsmith’s lively spirit, but her riveting work itself.”
A Talent for Murder opens in theaters October 23, 2026.
