Marty Supreme

• 1. Introduction

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  Marty Supreme is a 2025 American sports comedy-drama directed by Josh Safdie, and its title is a brand name that exists only inside its own story. In 1952, a young New York table tennis player named Marty Mauser pitches bright orange novelty balls stamped with his name. Timothée Chalamet plays him as a man who badly wants the sport to matter and will bend nearly any rule to make that happen. The character is loosely based on a real champion and hustler named Marty Reisman. The film reached theaters at the end of 2025 from the studio A24. Three questions run through what follows. Where did this restless, sometimes ridiculous character come from? How did a crew rebuild 1950s New York and fill it with unlikely faces? And how did a film about a long-shot athlete become a hit?

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• 2. A Memoir and a Friend

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  Josh Safdie first got interested in table tennis because his grandparents often hosted games at their house. Safdie remembers the players as "eccentric Jewish immigrant Lower East Side characters." That childhood image sat quietly for years until 2018, when his wife, Sara Rossein, bought him a copy of Marty Reisman's 1974 autobiography. Its full title is The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler. Rossein later became an executive producer on the film.

  At the time, Safdie was in conversations with Timothée Chalamet, who had recently become a friend. Safdie pitched the project by pointing to Reisman's physical resemblance to the actor. Chalamet accepted the role and began table tennis lessons that same year. He named two films about gamblers and pool sharks as touchstones: Robert Rossen's The Hustler from 1961 and Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money from 1986.

  In December 2023, Chalamet told the public that his next film would involve table tennis. By July 2024, the project was confirmed under its title. It was Safdie's first solo directing job since The Pleasure of Being Robbed in 2008, because he had made his following five films together with his brother Benny. He wrote the script with Ronald Bronstein.

  The script drew on Reisman's life, yet "sources close to the production" described it as "a fictionalized original, rather than a biopic." The writers invented a backstory for every person who appears on screen, even the minor ones. Central Pictures and IPR.VC produced the film alongside A24. The next question is what happens to Marty once those backstories collide.

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• 3. Marty's Bad Bets

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  In New York in 1952, Marty sells shoes at his uncle Murray's shop and plays table tennis professionally on the side. He dreams of winning the British Open and, through it, American attention for the sport. He is also having an affair with his married childhood friend, Rachel Mizler. When Murray refuses to give him $700 for the trip to London, Marty robs the shop's vault.

  In London, Marty skips the players' barracks inn and books a room at the Ritz Hotel. There he seduces a former actress, Kay Stone, and meets her wealthy husband, Milton Rockwell. Marty beats the defending champion, Bela Kletzki, in the semi-finals. He then loses the final to Koto Endo, a deaf Japanese player. Afterward he tours with Kletzki as a halftime novelty act for the Harlem Globetrotters. When Rockwell proposes a Tokyo exhibition against Endo, Marty storms off once he learns he is expected to lose on purpose.

  Back in New York, police arrest Marty for the theft, and he escapes. Rachel tells him she is pregnant, but he refuses to believe the child is his. He then learns that he cannot enter the World Championships unless he pays a $1,500 fine for fraudulently expensing his Ritz stay. Meanwhile, his friend Dion reveals that he did produce the orange balls, but Marty never followed up. Dion later throws the balls away.

  Raising the fine becomes its own comedy of errors. A collapsing bathtub injures a mobster named Ezra Mishkin, who pays Marty to take his dog, Moses, to a veterinarian. Marty instead hustles bowlers with his friend Wally. The bowlers attack them at a gas station, and the pair escape after damaging Wally's taxi and setting the station on fire. Moses runs away in the chaos.

  Rockwell comes to New York with a play meant to relaunch Kay's career. Marty tries to pawn a necklace he took from her, only to find it is costume jewelry. Rachel shows up with a black eye that she faked, and Marty assaults her husband over it. After Kay gives him a valuable necklace, they bribe police with it. Rockwell agrees to revive the Tokyo offer only after Marty submits to a humiliating public spanking.

  Mishkin then kidnaps Marty and Rachel and forces them to lead him to the farmhouse where Moses ended up. A shootout kills the farmer and badly wounds Rachel, who goes into premature labor. In Tokyo, Marty is too late to enter the championship. He loses the exhibition as planned. When Rockwell plans to make him kiss a pig on stage, Marty announces that the whole contest is a sham, demands a real rematch, and narrowly wins it. He flies home with U.S. Army soldiers, confesses his love to Rachel, and weeps at the sight of her newborn.

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• 4. Faces Found Everywhere

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  Kevin O'Leary was recruited because of his persona on the ABC reality series Shark Tank, which has run since 2009. Safdie and Bronstein flew to his home to watch him read the part. Safdie wrote the roles for Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler Okonma and Abel Ferrara with those four in mind. It was speculated that Julia Roberts had been offered Paltrow's part first and turned it down.

  Cinematographer Darius Khondji said the film used around 140 non-actors, among them the French highwire artist Philippe Petit. Casting director Jennifer Venditti had already scouted Isaac Simon and Odessa A'zion. The team found Luke Manley on social media, and Safdie suggested Isaac Mizrahi because he knew him. Venditti spotted Ralph Colucci at a horse track, matching the backstory Safdie had written for his character.

  Some casting came from friendship. Yale professor Paul Grimstad appeared at Bronstein's request, since the two had been roommates in the late 1990s. Grimstad had previously been in Bronstein's 2007 film Frownland. Mitchell Wenig, cast as a henchman, had already appeared in Safdie's Uncut Gems from 2019 and in Adam Sandler: Love You from 2024.

  A few plans fell through. Former basketball player Joe Johnson was flown to New York but never reached the set. Professional ping-pong player Wally Green was cast in a small speaking role, and his scene was cut. Venditti kept a ping-pong table nearby so the improvised casting sessions could include play. Late in post-production, Robert Pattinson recorded a cameo as the off-screen voice of a British Open umpire.

  Two uncredited cameos came from Safdie's circle in fashion and publishing. Mordechai Rubinstein, a New York fashion blogger, plays a shoe store salesman. Kim Hastreiter, co-founder of the magazine Paper, plays a shoe store customer. Their sets, in turn, had to be built from almost nothing.

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• 5. Building Old New York

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  Jack Fisk, the veteran production designer, took his cue from a 1955 Ken Jacobs film called Orchard Street. He saw it at the Museum of Modern Art, and he and the crew reportedly studied it while planning the sets. To hide modern buildings and signs, Fisk's team built blockers, including a delivery truck for the Jewish newspaper The Forward. The original Forward building also shows up in the background of several scenes.

  Lawrence's Broadway Table Tennis Club had been demolished, so Fisk rebuilt it from blueprints and black-and-white photos. Sara Rossein located a 16mm recording of the building, which gave the team its color palette. Norkin's Shoe Shop, where Marty works, was a real location. Even so, the crew built modular storefront units to avoid a modern hotel next door. For the scenes set in Auschwitz, they built barracks inside the same New Jersey house used for a farm scene.

  Safdie became obsessed with the garbage on the streets. Set decorator Adam Willis suggested wetting the trash so the actors would feel the grit their characters lived in. Safdie also wanted Marty's room painted white or off-white. Fisk refused, because the color would not have been accurate to the period.

  Principal photography began in New York on the 23rd of September 2024 and wrapped on the 5th of December 2024. Additional filming took place in Japan in February 2025. Only key crew members traveled there, and a Japanese crew had a single week of preparation. The budget of $60-70 million made it A24's most expensive film, surpassing Civil War from 2024.

  Darius Khondji, who had shot Uncut Gems with Safdie, filmed mostly on 35mm using Arriflex cameras and vintage Panavision anamorphic lenses. He wanted the camera to sit very close to the actors, "almost like having binoculars or a magnifier when looking at the characters." For medium and medium-tight shots he chose 65mm, 75mm or 100mm lenses. Most scenes were shot with two cameras running together.

  Chalamet was encouraged to do some of his own stunts. According to O'Leary, a double was meant to take the paddle spanking scene, but Chalamet insisted on doing it himself. The prop paddle broke on the first take, so a real one was used. Chalamet had also trained for months with coaches Diego Schaaf and former Olympian Wei Wang.

  The transformation went beyond the table. Safdie wanted Chalamet's eyes to look smaller, so he wore prescription glasses over contact lenses, which temporarily impaired his vision. Make-up artist Michael Fontaine added pockmarks, freckles and nicks. The effect was so convincing that Paltrow thought the scars were real and privately suggested he try micro-needling.

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• 6. Scored and Cut

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  Daniel Lopatin, the electronic artist who had scored the Safdie brothers' earlier films, first read the script in 2023. He guided his composing with a Spotify playlist that included New Order, Tears for Fears, Fats Domino and Constance Demby. Safdie and Lopatin spent around 10 weeks on the score in a Manhattan studio space. Mixing took place at Electric Lady Studios in New York, and the musician Weyes Blood sang background vocals.

  Peter Gabriel's song "I Have the Touch" plays in the film, and Gabriel was thankful to have it included. The soundtrack also features "Forever Young" by Alphaville, "The Perfect Kiss" by New Order, and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears. Les Paul's "How High the Moon" and Perry Como's "Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" supply the period sound.

  In January 2026, Safdie told director Sean Baker on the A24 podcast about an ending that never made it. An older Marty would take his granddaughter to a concert in the 1980s, and Milton Rockwell would turn out to be an actual vampire who bites Marty's neck. O'Leary proposed it. Safdie and Bronstein liked it enough to make "digital teeth" for him, but studio executives rejected it. O'Leary also came up with one of his last lines, in which his character calls himself a vampire.

  O'Leary pitched another idea, in which A'zion's character would die in childbirth. Safdie judged that too dark. An ending that played over the credits and showed Marty's future, with Chalamet in aging prosthetics, was filmed but left out of the final cut. Several other scenes were trimmed for pacing.

  Safdie's contract did not give him final cut, yet it never mattered because A24 fully backed his vision. Yvan Lucas handled color grading at Company 3, and with Khondji he made a 4K digital cinema package plus 70mm and 35mm prints. The film was finished on the eve of its New York premiere.

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• 7. Orange Blimps and Jackets

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  Marty Supreme premiered on the 6th of October 2025 as a "secret screening" in the Main Slate of the New York Film Festival. A24 released it in the United States on the 25th of December 2025. The campaign leading up to that date was unusually playful. Chalamet wrote and directed a staged video of a Zoom call with A24's marketing team, in which he pitched increasingly ridiculous ideas. GQ called it a "pitch-perfect, dryly hilarious satire of both corporate meeting culture and movie star narcissism."

  Some of the jokes became real. A rented bright orange blimp with the tail number N614LG, carrying "Marty Supreme" on each side, flew across the United States. Chalamet's drawing of the blimp from the video also became a Google easter egg when users searched for him or the film. In December, Safdie and the cast lit the Empire State Building orange ahead of the New York premiere.

  That same month, Chalamet posted a video from the top of the Las Vegas Sphere, the first person to stand there. The Sphere's team proposed the idea, and Chalamet designed and funded the stunt with CashApp. He also worked with the clothing brand Nahmias on a jacket. He sent it to people he considered "great," including Susan Boyle, Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Ringo Starr and Victor Wembanyama. Kid Cudi, Frank Ocean, Charli XCX and Kendall Jenner were later seen wearing it.

  The jacket was first meant only for Chalamet's press tour, but A24 decided to sell it to the public. In November, a temporary pop-up store opened in New York, and Chalamet visited it. Tyler Okonma's brand Golf Wang sold Marty Supreme hoodies, t-shirts and hats on its website.

  Rumors that Chalamet was the masked British rapper EsDeeKid followed him through interviews. He answered with "All will be revealed in due time." On the 19th of December 2025, he posted a video of himself on a remix of EsDeeKid's "4 Raws" with a verse that mentions the film. In January 2026, the Italian National Museum of Cinema unveiled a statue of Chalamet as Marty Mauser to promote the Italian release.

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• 8. Box Office and Awards

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  On the 19th of December, Marty Supreme opened in just six theaters in Los Angeles and New York City. It earned $875,000 that weekend, a per-theater average of $145,933. That was the highest ever for A24 and the best overall since La La Land in 2016. Projections had pointed to $12-20 million across 2,668 theaters over the four-day Christmas period.

  The film beat those projections. It made $9.8 million on its first day of wide release, including $2 million from Christmas Eve previews, and finished second to Avatar: Fire and Ash. The four-day Christmas weekend brought $27.3 million. The next three weekends added $12.5 million, $7.6 million and $6.6 million, making it A24's highest-grossing film at the domestic box office. In the United Kingdom it earned $21.7 million by the 24th of February 2026, another A24 record. Worldwide, it grossed roughly $192 million.

  Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a "B+." Critics focused on Chalamet. David Ehrlich of IndieWire called his work "one of the most colossal movie performances of the 21st century." David Fear of Rolling Stone compared it to the early work of Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman, calling it "a constant state of motion even when standing still." Odessa A'zion was singled out as the strongest performance outside Chalamet's.

  Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film five stars out of five and called it "a spectacular screwball ping-pong nightmare." Marshall Shaffer of Slant Magazine read it as a clear-eyed look at the hollow promise of American self-reliance. Not everyone agreed. Stephanie Zacharek of Time felt it lacked an emotional core, writing that Safdie "he'll throw anything at the wall to see if it sticks." William Bibbiani of TheWrap found the story arbitrary by the end.

  The National Board of Review and the American Film Institute each named it one of the top ten films of 2025. It collected nine nominations at the 98th Academy Awards and eleven at the 79th British Academy Film Awards. It also earned eight nominations at the 31st Critics' Choice Awards and three at the 83rd Golden Globes. Chalamet won Best Actor at both the Golden Globes and the Critics' Choice Awards. The film reached video on demand on the 10th of February 2026 and arrived on HBO Max on the 24th of April 2026.

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