‘Eddington’: Read The Screenplay For Ari Aster’s “Covid-19 Western” Where Nothing Is OK At The Corral
Deadline’s series spotlighting the scripts behind the awards season’s most talked-about movies continues with , ’s contemporary dark-comedy Western written and directed by .
Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Pedro Pascal star in Eddington, set during the tumultuous summer of May 2020 during the Covid pandemic. The story serves as a microcosm for a nation that lost its collective mind while sifting reality through social media.
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The film premiered In Competition at the Cannes Film Festival and hit U.S. theaters in July. It has grossed $13.7 million at the global box office.
Set in the small, fictional town of Eddington, NM, the script immediately immerses the audience in the chaos of that summer, examining the breakdown of social culture fueled by fear, misinformation and conspiracy theories.
The narrative quickly establishes the environment of an “ideological powder keg,” addressing key flashpoints of the era: the constant search for truth amidst fake news, the anxieties of social distancing, and the eruption of the Black Lives Matter movement against a backdrop of police tension. Aster’s script uses the framework of a classic Western to dissect the psychological and social unraveling.
True to Aster’s signature style, the script is structured to ground the audience in a recognizable world before its descent. The Covid narrative anchors the first act before pivoting into a disturbing and surreal third act where the story spirals into an almost manic climax.
At the center of Aster’s script is Sheriff Joe Cross (Phoenix), who is vulnerable and deeply cares about his community and his wife Louise Cross (Stone), but who finds himself battling to preserve social order in a rapidly changing world. In the script, Joe is a conservative figure who refuses to mask up on the grounds of common sense.
Conflict arises when Joe decides to run for mayor against the incumbent Ted Garcia (Pascal). Garcia represents the opposing force: a progressive, wealthy tech entrepreneur trying to modernize the town with an AI data center. This rivalry sparks a “powder keg” in the small town, turning neighbor against neighbor.
A key thematic element is the delirium of isolation and the illusory truth effect. Aster’s characters are shown deep-diving into the internet, finding comfort and validation in the conspiracy theories they consume. A key scene in the film is where Joe tells Louise, “I’m getting better,” while clearly suffering from the emotional and mental strain. She becomes a conduit for the film’s exploration of conspiracy theories. Feeling misunderstood by her husband, she falls into a “QAnon space” and becomes obsessed with Vernon Jefferson Peak (Austin Butler), a pied piper cult-leader figure.
Through Butler’s character, the script analyzes how “trauma-as-identity” can be weaponized to manipulate the vulnerable. Butler’s character offers performance and consolation to followers online, representing the dangerous figures that populated the fringes of the internet during the lockdown.
The film’s opening image of a cynical, homeless character reminiscent of one of Aster’s earlier short films, C’est La Vie, also sets a critical, outsider tone on the political and economic anxieties at play.
While Eddington utilizes the visual language of the American Southwest, Aster’s script is a dissection of the modern information ecosystem. The director describes the film as a Western where “the guns are phones,” situating the conflict not just in the streets but in the digital feedback loops that radicalized the country during the pandemic.
The screenplay explores the concept of “bubbles” colliding. Aster notes that the characters are trapped in a system based on feedback, and the story examines what happens when that feedback “ramps up beyond control.” The script avoids villainizing either the conservative sheriff or the progressive mayor; instead, Aster aimed for a democratic approach where every character has a point, even if expressed in “warped, deluded ways.”
Ultimately, the script frames these events as a dark comedy about the absurdity of the American experience. Aster emphasizes that while the events of 2020 were catastrophic, the culture surrounding them was often “ridiculous and stupid and impossible to take seriously.”
By situating the story in a fictional town that serves as a microcosm for the country, Eddington attempts to capture the feeling of a society where “post-1960s ideas of individualism have distorted into absurd forms,” leading to a terrifying new logic when those ideologies collide.
Here’s the screenplay:
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