"We've been having feelings that we're ready to revisit those characters," said Ethan Hawke last year. "There's nine years between Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, and if we made the film next summer, it would be nine years again..." Since then there have been no official announcements - and Hawke's co-star Julie Delpy actually sounded some notes of caution - but various reports now seem to suggest that Hawke, Delpy and director Richard Linklater are shooting a third Before right now.
If you're new here, the thoroughly charming first two instalments in the apparently ongoing slacker romance follow Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy). The pair first meet on a train (in 1995) and join forces for a rambling evening in Vienna. We then catch up with them in later life when they reconnect in Paris in 2004: Jesse has written a book about their brief encounter, and Celine shows up at a signing. We left their saga with Jesse missing his plane back to the States.
Nothing has been confirmed so far, so while Flix are straight-up reporting the new production as a fact, The Playlist are far more wary. The circumstantial evidence does seem reasonably convincing, however. The Greece Reporter says that Linklater is currently in Messinia, in the south-west Peloponnese, shooting "a film", and that Hawke was in the area scouting locations in the early summer.
The Sceptical Traveller blog meanwhile, confirms a more recent sighting of Hawke in the area, and specifies that at least part of the shoot is taking place in the former home of travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, "one of the most simple but lovely houses in existence, in the beautiful Kalamitsi Bay." And then, a commenter on said blog claims a sighting of Hawke and Delpy there together.
It's not quite conclusive, but it is compelling, and the Peloponnese would make some sense as a setting after Vienna and Paris. Hawke has recently caused some confusion by saying the main difference between a new film and the first two would be the Internet. Some have speculated that that means an online-centric plot, but what seems more likely is that he just meant nobody (except him) is talking about the film to stop wildfire rumours spreading. Well, looks like the cat's out of that bag.
Flix reckon the new film is called Before Midnight. Nobody else has got that info yet though, so watch this space for confirmations and updates.