After joining forces for last year's excellent show The Curse, Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone may join forces once again for a film detailing a famous chess scandal involving cheating, drama and perhaps some vibrating anal beads.
Checkmate will be based on the non-fiction book of the same name, and is set to see Fielder direct and Stone produce with her husband Dave McCary under their Fruit Tree banner, if all the deals close. A24 — the film house that also backed The Curse — is said to have outbid multiple larger studios to secure the project, as per The Hollywood Reporter.
UPDATE (6/5, 12:52 p.m. ET): Stone will also star in Checkmate, according to IndieWire. It will also be Fielder's directorial debut.
The real-life chess scandal that will inform Checkmate began in 2022, when chess world champion Magnus Carlson was beaten by 19-year-old Hans Niemann. At the time, Carlsen's team told the media that Neimann cheated his way into the win before withdrawing from the tournament completely.
As Consequence points out, cheating in real-life chess is immensely difficult, as there are metal detectors and phone bans in place at in-person tournaments. As rumours swirled as to how Neimann could have pulled such a feat off, one popular (but probably not true) estimation involved anal beads, for some reason.
Stone is one for repeat collaborations lately, as her second film with Yorgos Lanthimos Kinds of Kindness is coming soon following the success of Poor Things.