Why Brad Pitt Has No Movies Coming Out In 2020

It's nigh impossible to match the celebrity power of Brad Pitt. As the defining movie star of the '90s and 2000s, he's instantly recognizable to just about everyone on Earth and represents a kind of Hollywood profile that seems to be of the bygone gilt era. Tabloids still write about his and Jennifer Aniston's erstwhile relationship as the ultimate celebrity gossip that will not die. After at last taking Oscar gold home for the first time in his acting career for Best Supporting Actor in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Pitt's public-facing profession as an actor should seem ripe for taking on auteur leading-man roles as he ages into the distinguished laurels of elder actor statesmen. (He's 56, guys — when did that happen?)

That doesn't seem to be the case, however. Pitt has no acting credits lined up for 2020, or even 2021 as of this writing. What is he going to be up to, if not the thing we all know him best for? Running satellite networks to prevent genocide like real-life Batman-esque hero George Clooney? There's been rather a lack of him in this past decade as opposed to the one before it, too. Here are the reasons Brad Pitt has no movies coming out this year — at least not ones that he'll appear in.

You haven't seen as much of Pitt as you did in the '90s and early 2000s for one primary reason: he's shifted to being behind the camera, using his oodles of Benjamins harvested across 20-ish years to start his own production company — called, in an equal bit of cheekiness, Plan B Entertainment — and start funding film projects as if he's cinema's Oprah, surprising people with project finances. Pitt coyly told The New York Times in September 2019 that "producing just means you don't have to get up really early and put on makeup," which is a motivation we can totally get behind. And they say A-list movie stars aren't relatable to us peons — pshaw.

So, then, Pitt's not visible the the movie-consuming public at large per se, but he's no less busy. Here's a partial list of the films on which Pitt has worked as a producer or executive producer: The Big Short, Moonlight, Selma, By The Sea, 12 Years a Slave, Vice, and The Last Black Man In San Francisco. And that's just the high-profile stuff. None of these have net a directorial gig though, surprisingly enough. Given the amount of diverse projects Pitt's company is interested in seeing made, perhaps he's decided there are enough 50-something white guys directing movies out there, and opts simply to throw money at deserving works.

Though Pitt has no acting credits listed for 2020, there are a few films he's produced or executive-produced that are slated to debut in theaters this year. These include the comedy-drama Irresistible, the Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde, and the crime drama Kajillionaire. Fingers crossed that the coronavirus pandemic, which has caused film studios to delay movie releases as theaters close their doors around the world, won't impact Pitt's forthcoming projects.

Disappointing as it may be to hear, you can expect this creative shift to be permanent. "It'll be fewer and farther in between for me, just because I have other things I want to do now," Pitt explained about his fading desire for starring roles to The New York Times. "When you feel like you've finally got your arms around something, then it's time to go get your arms around something else." 

On top of that, Pitt has gained new hobbies, and in general is slowing down his day-to-day life, referring to acting as "a younger man's game." The days of glitz, glamour and photo ops are so far behind him now that when Moonlight, a film he executive-produced, won Best Picture at that infamous 2018 Oscars ceremony, Pitt wasn't even in attendance. Pitt found out about Moonlight's win secondhand while having a spaghetti dinner at a friend's house. 

Most of Pitt's cinematic efforts these days seem to be focused on giving others a platform to create art through his production company. IndieWire interviewed two of Plan B Entertainment's co-presidents, both of whom cited Pitt's personal intent to find films and filmmakers that need an outlet that has no studio interference and maximum creative freedom. "He reminds us all the time of the movies that we discovered long after their initial release, and he believes that we should tell stories that we feel like we would die if we didn't. He feels like we should work as hard as we can because what we do is a privilege," co-president Dede Gardner explained. 

Having made his buck, Pitt is less interested in putting himself forward and more so in using his money to give a leg-up to others. Nobody can argue with the generosity of that, even if it means we see less of him on screen in films.