Timothée Chalamet Plays Ping Pong in Josh Safdie’s Globetrotting Adventure

The 2025 fall movie season is shaping up to be an embarrassment of riches for fans of Josh and Benny Safdie. The filmmaking duo went their separate creative ways after “Uncut Gems,” each choosing to embark on their own ambitious project… which just means there are twice as many Safdie movies to enjoy this fall. Benny Safdie’s Dwayne Johnson-led MMA drama “The Smashing Machine” is up first, and then cinephiles will receive a holiday gift in the form of Josh Safdie’s “Marty Supreme,” which hits theaters on Christmas Day and just dropped its first trailer.

The film stars Timothée Chalamet as fictional table tennis star Marty Mauser in what has been characterized as an adventure film in the vein of “Catch Me If You Can.” Safdie and co-writer Ronald Bronstein (who also co-wrote and co-edited “Good Time” and “Uncut Gems”) took inspiration from the life of real ping pong pro Marty Reisman, though “Marty Supreme” is a fictionalized original story. Reisman’s life was examined in the 2014 documentary “Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler,” which examined both his 22 table tennis championships and his early years as a New York con artist.

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In true Safdie fashion, “Marty Supreme” features an eclectic mix of Hollywood A-listers and non-actors from other lines of work. In addition to Chalamet and Gwyneth Paltrow (who appears in her first on-screen film role since 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame”) the cast includes Fran Drescher, Abel Ferrara (AKA The Weeknd), Tyler, the Creator, “Shark Tank” star and billionaire Kevin O’Leary, magician Pen Jillette, Odessa A’zion, Sandra Bernhard, and French highwire daredevil Philippe Petit.

“Marty Supreme” was shot by “Eddington” and “Uncut Gems” cinematographer Darius Khondji, who recently said that he expects the film to be “box office dynamite” despite the fact that “the shooting was so hard and crazy.” He also praised Chalamet’s dedication to training with ping pong champions to prepare for the film’s athletic sequences.

“He wanted to be like a real [professional] ping pong player when he started shooting,” Khondji said of Chalamet during an appearance at the Doha Film Institute (via Variety). “Because you can do anything, any camera tricks you want, but you need to have a core.”

An A24 release, “Marty Supreme” opens in theaters on December 25. Watch the trailer below.

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