Timothée Chalamet Trained ‘For Months and Months’ To Play The Titular Ping Pong Champ in ‘Marty Supreme,’ Cinematographer Darius Khondji Says in Doha

Timothée Chalamet trained “for months and months” for his title role in Josh Safdie’s upcoming “Marty Supreme” about professional ping pong player Marty Reisman, reports Darius Khondji, the hotly anticipated film’s ace cinematographer. He added that he expects the A24 film’s Christmas 2025 release “to be box office dynamite.”

Khondji, who spoke to Variety on the sidelines of the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra workshop where he is a mentor, hasn’t yet seen “Marty Supreme,” which is now being edited in New York. But he underlined that “everything I hear is spectacular,” adding that “the shooting was so hard and crazy.”

Chalamet, who prepared for five years to play Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” also trained intensely for his role as Reisman – who started his career as a hustler in Manhattan and went on to win 22 major ping pong titles from 1946 to 2002 – “because you can do anything, any camera tricks you want, but you need to have a core,” Khondji said.

“He wanted to be like a real [professional] ping pong player when he started shooting,” Khondji continued, adding that Chalamet in the film is surrounded by “some of the greatest real ping pong champions playing today,” dressed like they would have been in the 1950s.

Khondji also said that Chalamet “is going to be very different than the Timothée Chalamet you’ve seen so far.”

“I don’t think people are going to recognize him at all,” he noted, adding that “Marty Supreme” audiences “will not recognize the usual romantic.” As for the film’s storyline, even though there’s a lot of ping pong, “The movie is about everything but ping pong,” he noted.

As previously reported, Gwyneth Paltrow has revealed that she is starring in “Marty Supreme” as the wife of a rival professional who falls into bed with Chalamet’s character and they have a lot of sex.

Khondji also underlined that in the film, Chalamet and Paltrow are “surrounded by like 140 non-actors,” including Abel Ferrara, magician Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) and French highwire artist Philippe Petit, who is known for his iconic high-wire walk between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center and was the subject of Oscar-winning documentary “Man On Wire.”

Khondji, a two-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer (“Evita,” “Bardo”), recently worked on Bong Joon-ho’s “Mickey 17” and Ari Aster’s “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal and Austin Butler. He teased Aster’s latest picture – which is believed to revolve around a small-town sheriff in New Mexico with ambitious dreams – saying he expected “Eddington” to soon premiere in Cannes.

Khondji said “Eddington” “is going to be very different from Ari’s recent films” that include “Hereditary,” “Midsommar” and “Beau Is Afraid,” noting that the film has “a Western vibe because of the landscape and because of the characters” but that he does not consider it as such.