The Menu: Read the script for Seth Reiss and Will Tracy’s delicious comedy horror

Editor’s note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the screenplays of films that will appear in this year’s film awards races.

To eat or not to eat? That’s the question posed to a group of wealthy diners in the twisted culinary satire The menu. The Searchlight Pictures film, directed by Mark Mylod, follows a respected, award-winning chef named Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) who spends the last night at his five-star island restaurant, Hawthorne. Several high-profile guests are seduced by the exclusivity of the mysterious island restaurant, including a shabby movie star, three obnoxious technicians, an elderly couple, a famous food critic, an overzealous foodie (Nicholas Hoult) and his sinister girlfriend. (Anya Taylor Joy). They expect a personal multi-course meal which, to their horror, becomes more and more exploitative and violent than the last one.

Seth Reiss and Will Tracy’s poignant screenplay offers a sharp commentary on how obscene wealth can corrupt and blind people to reality. In a darkly comic scene between Slowik and a highly educated diner, the chef simply admits he wants to kill her because she was able to graduate from Brown without a student loan.

“One of the things I’m most proud of The menu is that you can look at it through many different lenses,” Mylod told Deadline. “It’s a really fun ride, but it also has a social bite, and I hope it’s not as simple as ‘the rich eat.’ At least for me, the most interesting articles are about the individual characters and how their whole value system is distorted, eaten up and distorted.

The film opened at the Toronto Film Festival and has since received acting nominations for both Fiennes and Taylor-Joy at the Golden Globes. Hong Chau, John Leguizamo and Judith Light also star.

Admire the scenario by clicking below.