Last week, Japanese Breakfast leader Michelle Zauner explained why the movie adaptation of her memoir Crying In H Mart went into development hell, after she wrote the screenplay and a director was attached. The whole process sounds deeply difficult, but Zauner has plenty of other stuff going on. The new Japanese Breakfast album For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) drops on Friday, and Zauner also plays a part in a new high-profile film. She's got a new song in the trailer for Materialists, the new romantic comedy from Past Lives writer/director Celine Song.
In 2023, Celine Song got Grizzly Bear's Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen back together to score her directorial debut Past Lives. I loved that movie. Today, the internet is abuzz with the trailer for Song's follow-up Materialists, which is distributed by A24 but which looks like the kind of high-concept movie-star rom-com that would've been easy box-office money in the '90s or '00s. The premise is bulletproof: Dakota Johnson plays a sought-after rich-folks matchmaker who can't keep her own love life together. She's torn between handsome gazillionaire Pedro Pascal and old flame Chris Evans. What's a girl to do?
The trailer makes the movie look like a lot of fun, and it's mostly set to an as-yet-untitled song from Japanese Breakfast. There's also a cover of Madonna's "Material Girl" on there, but Japanese Breakfast's publicist says that she's not the one singing it. See the trailer for yourself below.
Materialists is in theaters 6/13.
