Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers is a tightly scaled, London-set chamber film about art as both confession and commodity—an inheritance scheme that begins like a “reverse” art heist and mutates into an uneasy, intimate duel (and eventual bond) between two artists.
Written by Ed Solomon and released in the U.S. by Neon in April 2026, the film centres on a once-famous painter and the younger restorer/forger hired to “complete” (or destroy) a legendary unfinished portrait series.
The Christophers Review (2026): Is the Movie Worth Watching?
The Christophers is widely recommended for viewers who like talk-driven, performance-led cinema: a two-hander built on psychological feints, craft arguments, and moral pressure rather than action spectacle.
Critics repeatedly point to the film’s central engine—Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel circling one another with suspicion, admiration, contempt, and (eventually) something like solidarity—as the reason the film works even when it toys with genre expectations.
Why The Christophers Is One of the Best Movies of 2026 So Far
Time explicitly framed the film as “one of the best” movies of the year so far, emphasising its intelligence, adult dramatic pleasures, and the way its comic surface opens onto deeper emotional stakes.
That kind of “best-of-2026” positioning is supported by unusually strong early critical aggregation (high Rotten Tomatoes and a strong Metacritic score) and by the consistency of praise for the leads and Solomon’s script.
Plot and ending
What Is The Christophers About? Full Plot Summary Explained
The set-up begins with a simple (and grubby) plan: two estranged siblings—children of an artist whose old work has become valuable—want to secure an inheritance by forging their father’s unfinished paintings so the works can be “discovered” and sold after his death.
Those siblings, Sallie and Barnaby, recruit Lori Butler—an art restorer and highly capable mimic who has also forged work—to get inside the father’s locked-down home and access the hidden canvases.
Their father is Julian Sklar: a reclusive painter who was once a star, but who hasn’t produced relevant new work in decades. He now earns money through short personalised videos on a Cameo-like platform and carries the reputational residue of his stint as the nasty judge on a reality competition show called Art Fight.
The “target” is a famed portrait cycle known as The Christophers—paintings whose market value and myth have grown precisely because the final group remains unfinished and unseen.
As the narrative progresses, the job becomes more dangerous and psychologically complicated than a simple stealth-forgery: the script introduces reversals, hidden motives, and a shifting contest for control of the canvases and the story behind them.
A key pivot—repeated across multiple reviews—is that Lori is not merely “finishing” paintings behind Julian’s back. Shortly after she’s hired, she learns her first task is to dispose of The Christophers, meaning she must create convincing substitutes if she wants to preserve the originals.
From there, the film steadily narrows into extended two-person scenes—arguments about technique and feeling, about what the paintings mean, and about whether “authenticity” lives in the artist’s hand, the viewer’s experience, or the price tag.
The Christophers Ending Explained: What Happens to Julian and Lori?
The ending lands less as a “gotcha twist” than as a choice: once Julian feels threatened, he decides he would rather burn The Christophers than let them be exploited or misread—turning the inheritance con into a crisis about legacy and control.
Because Julian orders the artworks destroyed, the film’s final movement becomes a tightrope of substitution and stewardship: Lori’s solution involves convincing Julian the destruction has happened while preserving what matters (including the work’s emotional truth) on terms neither the greedy heirs nor the market fully controls.
What ultimately “happens” to Julian and Lori is the film’s real finish line. Critics describe the story as starting with forgery and ending as an intimate meditation on art, with the relationship between the two artists transforming into an uneasy but lasting union.
The film also clarifies the title’s emotional weight: “Christopher” is revealed to be not only a subject on canvas, but a real person who mattered to Julian and hurt him—explaining why the paintings have been left incomplete and why Julian’s instinct is to bury (or destroy) them.
Several accounts underline that Julian returns to painting late in the film—Soderbergh and Solomon treating that act not as triumphant fan service, but as a concentrated expression of grief, devotion, and unfinished business.
Cast and performances
Who Stars in The Christophers? Cast and Characters Breakdown
The core cast is small and deliberately concentrated around the central conflict. Metacritic and Fandango list the principal lineup as:
Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, the acclaimed-but-lapsed painter whose unfinished portraits become the object of a scheme.
Michaela Coel plays Lori Butler, an art restorer and skilled forger recruited to infiltrate Julian’s home and deal with the paintings.
Jessica Gunning plays Sallie Milton Sklar, Julian’s daughter and one half of the inheritance plot.
James Corden plays Barnaby Sklar, Julian’s son and the co-architect of the scheme.
Supporting roles listed by Metacritic include Daniel Fearn (Locksmith), plus smaller parts such as a food truck patron and figures tied to Lori’s life outside Julian’s house—reinforcing how tightly the film is built around the two leads.
The Christophers Review: Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel Performance Analysis
McKellen’s Julian is consistently described as theatrically sharp—boozy, vain, funny, and cruel—yet also deeply readable as a man who has turned his own decline into performance (Cameo videos, Art Fight judge persona, cultivated misanthropy).
Coel’s Lori is the counterweight: controlled, observant, and difficult to “place” at first—until the film lets her precision come forward in long, high-wire passages about what Julian’s work is actually doing (emotionally and formally).
Multiple critics emphasise that the film’s pleasure is watching control and vulnerability change hands: Lori arrives as a con artist with a job to do, Julian acts like a tyrant guarding his kingdom, and the film keeps rebalancing who is manipulating whom.
Genre and style
The Christophers Movie Genre: Is It a Comedy, Drama, or Heist Film?
Major listings classify the film as a comedy-drama.
Yet several reviews describe it as a “reverse” art-heist story: the structure borrows the logic of a caper (sneaking into a house, accessing a guarded object, staging a deception), but the movie mainly delivers its suspense through talk—debate, negotiation, interrogation, performance.
That genre slipperiness is part of the point: the film begins in forgery and inheritance-greed, then steadily reveals itself as a film about authorship and artistic identity rather than about “getting away with it.”
Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers: Story, Themes, and Style
Soderbergh’s approach is intentionally “chamber” in scale. Ed Solomon has described Soderbergh floating a “chamber” concept early on, and the production itself was notably compressed—shot in nineteen days in 2025.
In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine, Soderbergh explained a formal rule that shapes how the movie feels: once Lori crosses the threshold into Julian’s house, the camera becomes handheld, while sequences outside that space use a steadier “studio mode”—a visual way to register emotional instability and power shifts inside the home.
Critics also point out classic Soderbergh signatures—tight, practical staging; attention to how people move in confined spaces; and a willingness to let long dialogue runs carry the scene—while still treating the film as a genre object with reversals and traps.
Paintings and meaning
What Are “The Christophers” Paintings in the Movie? Meaning Explained
Within the story, The Christophers are Julian Sklar’s most mythologised works: portraits of a former lover (Christopher) that have become a brand-like asset in the art market and the only thing the “outside world” still seems to want from him.
The Art Newspaper describes the works as a series of nine portraits of Christopher, with the final group of eight left unfinished and hidden away, making them unusually lucrative if “completed” and “discovered.”
On the craft side, Artnet’s production reporting explains how the film built believable artwork without over-specifying it: the eight incomplete Christophers are plain, intimate portraits focused on the face, with a Polaroid image of Christopher tacked to each canvas.
Artnet also reports that the Christophers were created by the film’s production designer Antonia Lowe and painter Barnaby Gorton, who produced multiple versions of the paintings to accommodate narrative needs (including different stages of completion).
Meaning-wise, the film frames the portraits as emotional evidence: they encode the arc of Julian’s relationship with Christopher and the pain that stopped the series from being finished—making the paintings less a “MacGuffin” than a wound the characters keep prodding.
The Christophers Themes Explained: Art, Forgery, and Legacy
A central theme is the financialisation of art: paintings treated as assets, artists treated as brands, and estate politics turning creative labour into inheritance warfare.
Another is authenticity—not only whether a brushstroke is “real,” but whether sincerity can survive inside copying, restoration, and market manipulation. The movie repeatedly pushes the idea that “value” is negotiated: between artist and viewer, between family and market, between what a work is and what it is for.
AP highlights the film’s interest in criticism itself—who has the right to judge art, and how criticism can be rigorous, cruel, performative, or genuinely illuminating.
The mentor–protégé (or adversary–apprentice) relationship is also foundational. Solomon has described wanting to write about mentorship dynamics, and critics often describe the film’s emotional endpoint as restorative rather than purely punitive.
Is The Christophers Based on a True Story or Original Script?
The film is presented as fiction from an original screenplay rather than a true-story adaptation.
At the same time, Solomon has acknowledged personal artistic influence: The New Yorker reports that Solomon’s mother is a painter and that he later recognised her influence on the script’s emotional DNA—especially the film’s preoccupation with unfinished work, regret, and the struggle to keep making art.
The film’s art-world procedures (restoration/forgery logistics, materials, and realism about studios) were also shaped by consultation; The New Yorker notes input from an art restorer (Lisa Rosen), among other advisers.
Reception and comparisons
Critical Reception of The Christophers: Rotten Tomatoes and Reviews Breakdown
As of the current early theatrical window, Rotten Tomatoes shows a very high critical approval rating for The Christophers (mid-90s) with dozens of critic reviews counted, alongside an early audience score that is positive but based on a small verified-rating sample.
Metacritic similarly aggregates the film in the high-70s (generally favourable) based on a few dozen critic reviews.
Representative critical praise includes AP’s strong review (three out of four stars) and a consistent focus across outlets on the script’s wit and the two central performances.
More mixed write-ups tend to frame any shortcomings as issues of flavour rather than competence—arguing that the film’s pleasures are actorly and intellectual, and that viewers expecting a “bigger” caper may find its talk-first design limiting.
The Christophers vs Other Steven Soderbergh Movies: How It Compares
Several critics position The Christophers within Soderbergh’s modern run of compact, adult-oriented experiments: smaller than the Ocean’s films, more intimate than his systemic thrillers, and structurally closer to a “pressure cooker” or stage-like chamber piece.
The comparison most frequently implied is not to Soderbergh’s flashiest capers, but to his dialogue-forward work—films where the real “action” is negotiation, confession, performance, and control.
At the same time, critics note familiar Soderbergh pleasures embedded in the small scale: the faint caper rhythm, the satisfaction of procedural problem-solving (how to access, copy, hide, destroy, or save an object), and the incremental reveal of who is running the game.
Viewing notes and reference material
The Christophers Parents Guide: Age Rating and Content Warning
In the United States, the film is rated R for language (Motion Picture Association), as reported by AP and box-office listing data.
Content described in reviews also includes adult themes tied to sex/relationships and artistic humiliation, plus sequences of drinking and abrasive verbal cruelty consistent with Julian’s characterisation.
UK listings at Picturehouse show the certificate as “TBC” as of the current release information.
Where to Watch The Christophers (2026) and Release Date Details
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2025 and entered U.S. theatrical release in April 2026 through Neon.
AP reports a platform rollout: opening first in New York and Los Angeles, then expanding nationwide on April 17, 2026.
Major ticketing and listings show the film in cinemas and also list it for digital purchase via Fandango at Home.
For the UK, Picturehouse listings give a release date of 15 May 2026.
10 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Is The Christophers a comedy or a drama?
It is commonly classified as a comedy-drama, but it plays like a genre hybrid: a caper-like forgery premise that becomes a talk-driven character duel. - How long is The Christophers?
Listings cluster around roughly 100 minutes (often shown as 1 hour 40 minutes). - Who plays Julian Sklar and Lori Butler?
Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, and Michaela Coel plays Lori Butler. - What is The Christophers (the paintings) in the story?
They are Julian Sklar’s most famous portraits—works tied to a former lover named Christopher and treated by the art world (and Julian’s children) as valuable assets. - Are the paintings in the film “real” artworks made for production?
Yes. Production reporting details that the Christophers canvases were created for the film by the production team (including Antonia Lowe and Barnaby Gorton), with specific design choices like a plain background and a Polaroid reference attached to each canvas. - Is The Christophers based on a true story?
It is presented as an original screenplay rather than a true-story adaptation. - What is “Art Fight” in the movie?
Art Fight is the reality competition show where Julian cultivated a Simon Cowell-like persona as a harsh judge—an element repeatedly cited as part of his public image and downfall. - Does the film explain who Christopher is?
Yes. Review coverage notes that the film eventually clarifies Christopher as a real person from Julian’s past whose relationship with him is central to the paintings’ emotional charge. - Where can The Christophers be watched right now?
Listings show it in cinemas and also list it for purchase on Fandango at Home (availability varies by region). - What is the clearest “safe-to-know” description of the ending without scene-by-scene spoilers?
Review descriptions converge on an ending that prioritises artistic legacy and relationship over a conventional heist payoff: Julian moves to destroy the paintings, Lori’s actions become a form of preservation-by-deception, and the film resolves around what the work means to the two artists rather than to the market.
conclusion
The Christophers works because it treats art fraud as a gateway to something more human: a battle over authorship, ageing, and the right to define what a work “is” once it leaves (or refuses to leave) the studio.
Across reviews, the film’s essential promise is consistent: a brisk, sharply written, often funny two-actor pressure cooker in which the paintings matter less as objects than as evidence of love, injury, and the desire to control one’s own legacy.
sources and citation
- Associated Press (Lindsey Bahr), review and release/rating details
- The Christophers review: McKellen and Coel lead fun art pic | AP News Rotten Tomatoes, critic score and audience score snapshot
- The Christophers | Rotten Tomatoes Metacritic, metascore, runtime, genre, and cast listing
- The Christophers Reviews | Metacritic Time (Stephanie Zacharek), critical feature/review
- The Christophers Is One of the Best Movies of the Year So Far | TIME NPR / WAMC (Bob Mondello), review summary including the burn-or-destroy pivot
- In Steven Soderbergh’s ‘The Christophers,’ an aging artist meets his match | WAMC / NPR The Art Newspaper (Dan Schindel), review and art-world context/plot mechanics
- In The Christophers, an aging artist’s unfinished masterpieces are subjects of speculation and scheming | The Art Newspaper Artnet News (Min Chen), production reporting on the paintings and studio design
- The Art of ‘The Christophers’: How the Film Created an Artist’s Fabled Oeuvre | Artnet News Slant Magazine (Seth Katz), review with key plot reversals
- ‘The Christophers’ Review: Steven Soderbergh Paints an Expansive Portrait of an Artists’ Duel | Slant Magazine The New Yorker (Emma Allen; Justin Chang summary), reporting/review context on themes and the film’s chamber design
- Ed Solomon’s Family Portrait | The New Yorker
- An Artists’ Duel Proves Restorative in “The Christophers” | The New Yorker Fandango and Picturehouse listings, practical release and cinema information
- The Christophers (2026) Tickets & Showtimes | Fandango
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