Jude Law Cast Alongside Scarlett Johansson In Ari Aster’s Scapegoat

Reports have surfaced stating that The New Pope star Jude Law is in talks to appear in the cast list for Ari Aster’s upcoming film, Scapegoat, alongside previously confirmed cast members Scarlett Johansson and Jacob Elordi. The film has been cited as a thriller released under A24, who have also distributed Aster’s previous features: 2018’s Hereditary, 2019’s Midsommar, 2023’s Beau is Afraid and 2025’s Eddington.

Given how Aster’s first two works cemented his name in the Elevated Horror subgenre and his last two seeing the director branch off into surrealism and satirical comedy-dramas, talk about what his upcoming releases will entail ranges from a romance in a sci-fi setting to commentary on internet-celebrity culture with an operation featuring as a key plot point.

Nonetheless, this all remains speculation, as plot details are yet to be confirmed.

We do know Aster will produce with his partner Lars Knudsen.

As mentioned, the director’s debut, Hereditary, helped with pioneering the late 2010’s love for Elevated horror, meaning a seemingly traditional horror film with deep intellectual/emotional weight and artistic weight. The supernatural psychological film starred Toni Collette, Alex Wolff, Milly Shapiro, Ann Dowd, and Gabriel Byrne, focusing on a family suffering from grief and a strange, menacing cult the grandmother was involved with. The filmmaker followed this successful debut with Midsommar, a folk horror starring Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren, Ellora Torchia, Archie Madekwe, and Will Poulter, narrating an expedition to Sweden to study a mysterious cult who hide a sinister motive.

2023 saw Aster move more towards a tragicomedy approach with Beau Is Afraid. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Nathan Lane, Amy Ryan, Kylie Rogers, Parker Posey, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Hayley Squires, Michael Gandolfini, Zoe Lister-Jones, Armen Nahapetian, and Richard Kind, the film centres on a paranoid man attempting to travel to his mother’s home and encountering his deepest fears along the way. Aster’s most recent film was 2025’s Eddington, a satirical take on the neo-Western genre starring Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Austin Butler, and Emma Stone; this 2025 Cannes release charts a contested mayoral election taking place in a New Mexico town.

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Law has just stepped off Olivier Assayas’s political satire, The Wizard of the Kremlin, as a young Vladimir Putin, as well as recently appearing in Ron Howard’s survival thriller Eden. He is set to appear in Nancy Meyers’s romantic comedy, Paris Paramount, alongside Penélope Cruz and Kieran Culkin.

Meanwhile, Johansson is taking a detour into horror after her Marvel and Jurassic Park stint, having been cast in Mike Flanagan’s upcoming reboot of The Exorcist, titled The Exorcist: Martyrs. She is also set to appear in Matt Reeves’s The Batman: Part II, transitioning from Marvel to DC.

As for Elordi, he has enjoyed a run in book adaptations, such as Guillermo del Toro’s Gothic sci-fi horror Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s book of the same title, and Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”, adapted from the Emily Brontë book of the same name. His recent onscreen appearance is Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, based on the Peter Heller novel of the same title.

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Ros Tibbs

Editor

Ros is a film and lit graduate writing news and reviews at The People's Magazine. She also writes long-form film theory, film history, analytical or curated recommendations pieces on other platforms.

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