Tom Waits Is In Martin McDonagh’s New Movie Wild Horse Nine

American original Tom Waits doesn't. make new music too often anymore. He'll reportedly appear on an upcoming Shane MacGowan tribute album, but that'll be a rare thing. He hasn't released an album since 2011's Bad As Me, and he doesn't seem to be in a hurry to drop another one. Nevertheless, Waits will still take character-actor roles in auteurist movies. In recent years, he's been in pictures like The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, The Old Man & The Gun, and Licorice Pizza. Last year, Waits was the nominal lead in his old collaborator Jim Jarmusch's family anthology Father Mother Sister Brother, which got international festival attention but didn't make much critical or commercial noise in the US. Next, he'll be in Martin McDonagh's new film Wild Horse Nine.

The next Martin McDonagh film is a big deal. The Irish playwright only has four movies to his name, but he won an Oscar for writing 2017's Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and he got more nominations for his last one, 2022's The Banshees Of Inisherin. Wild Horse Nine is about a couple of CIA spooks bumbling around Easter Island while paving the way for Pinochet's 1973 coup. It looks like an ultra-dark comedy, which is McDonagh's preferred style, and the cast is a bounty of scenery-munching character actors: John Malkovich, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Parker Posey. Naturally, Tom Waits is in there, too.

Waits is only in the Wild Horse Nine trailer for long enough to get his name in the trailer, but that's enough for me. That one shot looks great! Waits previously appeared in McDonagh's least esteemed movie, 2012's pretty-good-in-my-memory Seven Psychopaths. Years ago, there were reports about Waits and McDonagh working on a stage musical together, but nothing ever came of those. Watch the Wild Horse Nine trailer below.

Wild Horse Nine sadly is not scheduled to hit theaters until 11/6, so this trailer is really early.