John Turturro as Jesus Quintana

Update – July 8th: The film, now titled The Jesus Rolls, is set to hit theaters in early 2020.

John Turturro has been hard at work on a spinoff to The Big Lebowski based around his character Jesus Quintana. In a new interview with The Independent, Turturro offered an updated on the project, which he’s titled, Going Places.



While working on an English-language adaptation of Bertrand Blier’s 1974 French erotic comedy Les Valseuses, Turturro kept being reminded of Quintana. “I started playing around with it and I thought we could be onto something with his irony and the irreverence of the character,” he told Screen Daily back in 2016.

Fast forward three years and Turturro’s Big Lebowski spin-off film is just about complete. As he explained to The Independent, the editing process took a lot longer than he anticipated, but he’s finally settled on a cut of the film that meets his standards.

(Read: The Big Lebowski Perfected the Art of the Stoner Noir)

A previously released plot synopsis describes Going Places as a film about “a trio of misfits whose irreverent, sexually charged dynamic evolves into a surprising love story as their spontaneous and flippant attitude towards the past or future backfires time and again, even as they inadvertently perform good deeds.” In addition to Turturro, the cast includes Audrey Tautou and Bobby Cannavale.

“It’s a bit of a racy movie,” Turturro elaborated in an interview with The Independent. “It shows how stupid men are. That’s what the movie is kinda about – the women are the stronger, more together characters. I had to tweak it a little bit but now I feel really good about it. It’s basically an exploration of Jesus getting out of jail [after being framed as a pedophile]. It’s a comedy but a very human comedy.”

Turturro made Going Places with the full support of Big Lebowski directors Joel and Ethan Coen. “They’re my friends, close friends, and were supportive when I said I wanna explore this character more,” he said. “They said, you gotta do it cause we’re not doing it! If I have something to show, I show it to them if they’re around.”

While a release date has not yet been set, it’s expected that Turturro will debut Going Places later this year at a fall film festival.