“The Phoenician Scheme,” a leaner tale which Focus Features will release May 30, is Anderson working in high comic gear. A playful and poignant kind of thriller, it stars Del Toro as the tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda, who decides to name his daughter, a novitiate (Threapleton) heir to his dubiously accrued fortune.

"I was probably too young and it was annoying to him," Anderson recalled of his on-set dynamic with the late actor, who died in February at age 95