Benny Safdie confirms Safdie brothers split, calls change with brother Josh 'natural progression'
There is no bad blood between the Safdie brothers amid their creative split, Benny Safdie says.
Brothers Josh and Benny Safdie, along with their production company, Elara Pictures with Ronald Bronstein, directed movies "Uncut Gems" and "Good Time," and produced shows "Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God," "Telemarketers" and more. The other half of the filmmaking family duo opened up about their separate ventures in a Variety interview published Thursday.
Amid Benny Safdie's solo filmmaker job for Mark Kerr biopic "The Smashing Machine" and booming acting career with roles in "Oppenheimer," "Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret" and "The Curse," fans have speculated there is a rift with his older brother.
"It's a natural progression of what we each want to explore," Benny Safdie told Variety. "I will direct on my own, and I will explore things that I want to explore. I want that freedom right now in my life."
The duo was also supposed to collaborate on a follow-up film to "Uncut Gems" with Adam Sandler, which Benny Safdie stepped away from.
The movie is "on pause," he told Variety.
When asked whether the "Oppenheimer" actor plans to direct with his brother in the future, he said, "I don't know."
USA TODAY has reached out to reps for Josh Safdie.
In July, Benny Safdie told GQ that although he is not a part of the Sandler movie, Elara Pictures "is still there" to create it.
"We work on a lot of documentaries and there's just a constant flow of ideas. It just felt like, OK, there's things that I want to explore that don't necessarily align right now with Josh. So it's a divide-and-conquer mentality," he said, adding that his older brother "wants to tell this story, he can go and do that. I'm going to go and do a couple of other things. It seems like a natural progression for how things have happened."
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