He was the rockstar of the culinary world until his untimely death in 2018. Now, Anthony Bourdain is getting a the Hollywood treatment, with a movie tracking his rise to chef superstardom. And the film has found its star.
The biopic, simply titled Tony, is being produced by indie hitmaker A24 and will be directed by Matt Johnson. And for the part of a young Bourdain, the film has tapped The Holdovers breakout star, Dominic Sessa.
However, Sessa isn’t the only name attached to the Tony cast. Read on for everything you want to know about the film.
The Anthony Bourdain Biopic Cast
The role of Anthony Bourdain will be played by Dominic Sessa, a 22-year-old American actor. Sessa’s star has risen rapidly following his critically acclaimed turn in the 2023 film, The Holdovers. Sessa was born and raised in New Jersey, giving him a likeness to Bourdain, who was born in New York and raised in Jersey.
Antonio Banderas will also star in Tony, but his part is yet to be disclosed.
While Banderas is a household name, Sessa and director Matt Johnson are on the cusp of their stardom. Johnson, 39, recently directed the Nirvanna the Band the Show – The Movie, which premiered at SXSW to rapturous praise. Sessa, meanwhile, has a number of projects to be released in 2025, including an ensemble cast Christmas film, Oh. What. Fun, and Now You See Me 3, opposite Mark Ruffalo, Morgan Freeman and Rosamund Pike.
What Is The Anthony Bourdain Movie, Tony, About?
Little is known about the project thus far. However, Deadline reports Tony will follow Anthony Bourdain through the summer of 1976, when a young Bourdain was in Provincetown. It was here Bourdain held his first job as a dishwasher at a local restaurant.
Bourdain detailed his time in Provincetown in his best-selling memoir, Kitchen Confidential. He described the locale as “a wonderland of tolerance, with a longtime tradition of accepting artists, writers, the badly behaved, the gay, the different. It was paradise”.
“The joy that can only come with an absolute certainty that you’re invincible, that none of the choices that you make will have any repercussions or any effect on your later life,” Bourdain wrote. “Because we didn’t think about those things. I don’t even know what I thought I was going to be. At that point, I certainly didn’t think I was going to be a cook. I don’t know what I thought I was going to be. I was just, you know, hanging out in a beautiful place.”
In his popular cooking travel series, No Reservations, Bourdain revisited Provincetown. While his days here were spent relaxing on the beach or hanging out with friends, his nights consisted of “drinking, getting high, [and] drilling out food.”
In the absence of plot details, it’s possible Tony could cover a relatively peaceful time in Anthony’s life. The star chef would later struggle with substance abuse and his mental health. It’s possible his summer in Provincetown was both the start of incredible highs and tragic lows. Bourdain eventually died by suicide in 2018.
Anthony Bourdain Biopic Release Date
So far, there’s no inkling of a release date for the Anthony Bourdain film, Tony. We’ll be sure to keep you updated.
