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If you’ve seen Timothée Chalamet popping up courtside with a ping-pong paddle and a thick New York accent, you’re not alone. A24’s Marty Supreme has been quietly building intrigue for months, surfacing in paparazzi shots, cryptic casting announcements, and the occasional on-set leak. The confusion is deliberate.
Directed by Josh Safdie, one-half of the filmmaking duo behind Uncut Gems and Good Time, Marty Supreme draws on the life of Marty Reisman, a legendary American table tennis hustler who turned ping-pong into a lifelong grift.
But the film is not a traditional biopic. Instead, it uses Reisman’s life and persona as the foundation for a fictionalised character study. With a tone closer to hustle culture than traditional sports drama, think The Wolf of Wall Street but with ping-pong instead of penny stocks.
Chalamet plays Marty, a sharp-tongued New Yorker who made his name as a teenage table tennis prodigy before drifting into a lifetime of playing the game. Although table tennis is at the centre of the story, as the title suggests, the focus is on the personalities involved rather than the sport’s technical mastery.
Safdie said the film is built around obsession, ego, and the need to perform. Reisman was famous for talking as much as he played, baiting opponents, bending rules, and turning matches into sports theatre.
Marty Supreme marks Safdie’s first solo feature since he and brother Benny paused their joint projects. Where Uncut Gems felt like anxiety set to a drumbeat, this new film appears looser, funnier, and just as volatile. And of course, being an A24 film, you can expect the usual trimmings of grittiness, coupled with character-driven storytelling that will put audiences court side of this wild story.
Confirmed Cast for ‘Marty Supreme’
Alongside Chalamet, the cast includes Gwyneth Paltrow, Tyler, the Creator, and Penn Jillette. Paltrow plays Marty’s wife, marking her first acting role in several years. Beyond casting and premise, A24 has kept further plot details tightly controlled. Here’s the cast list:
- Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser
- Larry Sloman as Murray Norkin
- Fran Drescher as Rebecca Mauser
- Gwyneth Paltrow as Kay Stone
- Kevin O’Leary as Milton Rockwell
- Mariann Tepedino as Mariann
- Odessa A’zion as Rachel Mizler
- Ralph Colucci as Lloyd
- Tyler the Creator as Wally
- George Gervin as Lawrence
- Luke Manley as Dion Galanis
- Sandra Bernhard as Judy
- Emory Cohen as Ira Mizler
- John Catsimatidis as Christopher Galanis
- Géza Röhrig as Béla Kletzki
- Koto Kawaguchi as Koto Endo
- Nikhil Gowda as Amit Vishwakarma
What’s Going on with the Marketing?
Beyond the film itself, much of the conversation around Marty Supreme has been driven not by trailers and official set photos, but by its marketing. Chalamet has taken an active role in the rollout, leaning into a promotion style that blurs the line between publicity and live performance.
In October, he invited fans to a late-night screening at Regal Times Square with a hand-scrawled Instagram post: “Show up here. 9pm. I’ll show you the first 30 minutes of Marty Supreme.” When he arrived, Chalamet was flanked by performers wearing oversized orange ping-pong-ball helmets. And so began the Marty Supreme Orange craze.
Far from a random flourish, orange is integral to the film’s narrative. In teaser footage, Marty pitches the idea of a custom orange ping-pong ball, arguing it would make the game easier to follow while doubling as personal branding.
Serving as producer, Chalamet has leaned hard into orange as the film’s visual shorthand. The campaign included a bright orange blimp, limited-edition Marty Supreme merchandise, and a branded Wheaties box, all echoing the same on-screen logic of visibility and self-promotion.
The tactics build on similar ideas Chalamet tested during the press run for A Complete Unknown, his Bob Dylan biopic, where his unconventional appearances kept the film in conversation well beyond its promo cycle. With Marty Supreme, the methods are clearly more colourful. And that makes sense when you take into account the film’s pricetag. With a budget in the range of $60 million to $70 million, it’s reportedly the most expensive production for A24 to date.
In an interview with the BBC, Chalamet framed the rollout as a way to get people back into cinemas.
“My responsibility as a young actor is less to go, ‘Hey, how do we get people to revisit this traditional form?’ and rather, ‘How do we take this traditional form and bring it to people?’”
He also positioned Marty Supreme as something increasingly rare. “This is an original film at a time where a lot of original films aren’t made,” Chalamet added. “There’s no part of me that’s a salesman saying this, but I’ve never been more confident in saying, ‘If you bring yourself to see this movie, you won’t be let down.’”
Marty Supreme is in cinemas from 22 January, 2026.
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