‘The History of Sound’ Won’t Be Ready for Fall Festivals, Aims for Cannes 2025 (Exclusive)

The History of Sound, the Oliver Hermanus-directed gay drama starring Academy Award nominee Paul Mescal and Emmy Award winner Josh O’Connor, won’t be ready in time for the fall festival route this year and will aim for a Cannes 2025 bow.

I talked with Hermanus on Friday evening where he was being honored by the Critics Choice Association at their inaugural LGBTQ+ Celebration of Cinema & Television event at the Fairmount Century Plaza in Los Angeles. Hermanus was awarded the Director Award for Television (Series) for his work in the STARZ limited series, Mary & George. Hermanus’s most recent film, 2022’s Living, earned star Bill Nighy an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

“Venice asked for it but it’s not ready,” Hermanus said. “We have a lot of score to create, Paul [Mescal] and Josh [O’Connor] sing in it, and it’s all about sound,” he continued, with a laugh. He went on to say that they’d likely aim for Cannes 2025 to debut the film.

The History of Sound, based on the Pushcart Prize-winning short story by Ben Shattuck, is an historical romantic drama about two men, Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor), who fall in love while traveling together to record the stories and songs of their countrymen during World War I. Hermanus and Shattuck developed the script together in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown at Hermanus’s home in South Africa, describing ithe source material as a “flawlessly beautiful short story.” Mescal and O’Connor were cast in late 2021 and principal photography was set to begin in the summer of 2022 but was postponed due to the actors’ schedules. During this period Hermanus put together the gay royal miniseries Mary & George at STARZ, starring Academy Award winner Julianne Moore and Nicholas Galitzine.

In an interview with Variety at the time of the film’s announcement, Hermanus said, “This is an unexpected love story that needs to be told — it is a journey through the life of America, across the 20th century and the traditions of American folk music, all seen through the bond between two men immersed in the history of sound.” You can read Shattucks short story here.

Filming of The History of Sound kicked off in late February 2024 in the United States (New York and New Jersey), United Kingdom and Italy and wrapped two months later. The film is produced by Thérèsa Ryan, Sara Murphy, with End Cue’s Lisa Ciuffetti and Andrew Kortschak, who praised the story as ‘beautiful and resonant,’ calling the opportunity to work with Mescal, O’Connor, and Hermanus ‘an immense privilege.’ Molly Price and Allison Bartlett co-star.

Mescal recently starred in Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers, for which he received a BAFTA nomination for supporting actor. He’s set to shoot an adaption of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet with Jessie Buckley for Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao this summer and he’ll next be seen in his major studio breakthrough Gladiator II this November alongside two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington. O’Connor is on a hot streak this year with the hit tennis triple play Challengers that also starred Zendaya and Mike Faist from Luca Guadagnino and Alice Rohrwacher’s Italian artifact comedy-drama La Chimera, both released this spring. He’ll shoot the third installment of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films, Wake Up Dead Man, alongside Daniel Craig, Cailee Spaeny, Josh Brolin, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Thomas Haden Church, Mila Kunis and Daryl McCormack, with production beginning in early June.

UTA is also handling the domestic sales of the film. Film4 are co-financing the production.