Principal photography has begun on location in New York City on the noir thriller “Motherless Brooklyn,” for Class 5 Films and MWM Studios. Three-time Academy Award nominee Edward Norton will direct from his own screenplay and produce with his Class 5 Films producing partner Bill Migliore MWM Studios’ Gigi Pritzker and Rachel Shane, whose collective credits include “Hell or High Water” and “Genius,” will also produce. The film will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.
The stellar ensemble cast includes Norton, Bruce Willis (“Die Hard,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Pulp Fiction”), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (“Belle,” “Beauty and the Beast”), Academy Award nominee Willem Dafoe (“The Florida Project,” “Shadow of The Vampire,” “Platoon”), Academy Award nominee Alec Baldwin (“The Cooler”), Cherry Jones (“American Crime,” “Transparent”), Ethan Suplee (“Chance,” “American History X”), Leslie Mann (“This is 40”), Josh Pais (“Ray Donovan”), Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens (producer, “The Cove”), Michael K. Williams (“Assassin’s Creed”), and Robert Wisdom (“The Dark Knight Rises,” “Ballers”).

Set against the backdrop of 1950s New York, “Motherless Brooklyn” follows Lionel Essrog (Norton), a lonely private detective afflicted with Tourette’s Syndrome, as he ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend, Frank Minna (Willis). Armed only with a few clues and the powerful engine of his obsessive mind, Lionel unravels closely-guarded secrets that hold the fate of the whole city in the balance. In a mystery that carries him from gin-soaked jazz clubs in Harlem to the hard-edged slums of Brooklyn and, finally, into the gilded halls of New York’s power brokers, Lionel contends with thugs, corruption and the most dangerous man in the city to honor his friend and save the woman who might be his own salvation.