It Is Finally Confirmed: Danny Ramirez and Pedro Pascal Will Take on Todd Haynes’s Queer Romance
It’s a Last of Us reunion! The best news to perhaps come out of this whole week so far. Todd Haynes’s (Carol, May December) queer romance gets its second life, and with the most perfect replacement possible for Joaquin Phoenix’s departure. Really, I couldn’t have imagined a better choice.
Haynes was set to begin production on De Noche just a few weeks after Phoenix dropped from the project. He was set to star opposite Danny Ramirez of Top Gun: Maverick and Marvel fame. Now, the rumors about who stepped up in the role have been confirmed.
Variety reports that Pedro Pascal is now officially signed on to the project. It’s his first collaboration with Haynes. The screenplay was written alongside Haynes’s longtime collaborator, Jon Raymond, and is said to be a noir film with echoes of Chinatown.
De Noche stars Danny Ramirez as a boarding school teacher in 1930s Los Angeles. Pascal will be replacing Phoenix as a cop that falls in love with Ramirez’s teacher. The two men become targets of the city’s corrupt political machine and are forced to flee to Mexico.
Said Haynes of the film: “This story, with Pedro Pascal and Danny Ramirez in the two leads, arises out of an er–all too relevant to our own–of domestic corruption, racial exploitation and global terror. But it emerges as a testament to the inexplicable powers of desire and love to survive and overcome even the most crippling of human barriers.”
The movie comes from financier MK2 Films, an indie French banner that was also behind Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent. MK2 is also in charge of international sales for De Noche as well as the domestic rights to the film with Cinetic Media. Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films are producing De Noche.
Shooting will begin in March 2026.
(featured image: Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images for The Walt Disney Company Limited)
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