Penélope Cruz says she and Javier Bardem rarely work together, yet Bunker is their sixth film

Penélope Cruz says she and Javier Bardem decided long ago "not to work together very often". She said it while promoting Bunker, their sixth film together.

Cruz appeared with writer-director Florian Zeller at Deadline's Contenders London event at the Ham Yard Hotel on October 10. She explained that the rule was a way to protect the relationship: working together too often would be too risky. With Bunker, she said, the temptation was huge because they both love Zeller's work, and once they had read the script and spoken to him, they could not see a reason to say no. They trusted that he would not try to force anything from their real marriage into the film.

"Not very often", counted

Cruz and Bardem have shared the screen in five films before this one, according to Wikipedia:

• Jamón jamón (1992): where they first met. They began dating in 2007.
• Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008): Woody Allen's film, with Scarlett Johansson. Bardem earned a Golden Globe nomination.
• The Counselor (2013): Ridley Scott's thriller, with Cruz as Laura and Bardem as Reiner.
• Loving Pablo (2017): Bardem as Pablo Escobar, Cruz as Virginia Vallejo.
• Everybody Knows (2018): Asghar Farhadi's drama.
• Bunker (2026): the sixth.

Whether that counts as "not very often" depends on the period you look at. Since they married in 2010, there have been four joint films in 16 years. Between 2013 and 2018, there were three in five years. The eight-year gap before Bunker is the longest stretch of the rule actually holding.

The marriage on screen and the one off it

In Bunker, Bardem plays Miguel, a successful London architect who considers a prestigious offer to build a survivalist bunker for a tech billionaire. The project makes his wife Sofia (Cruz) question their 17-year relationship as they are drawn deeper into extreme wealth, paranoia and fear. An unsettling neighbour adds to the anxiety.

The real couple has been together for 19 years and married for 16. The fictional marriage is, by a couple of years, the younger one.

Zeller wrote the film with Cruz and Bardem specifically in mind. He told the London audience it had been a dream to work with them, and that it was a chance to explore love and forgiveness in a long-term relationship through a real couple.

The 11-minute fight

The centre of the film, Zeller said, is an almost 11-minute argument between the two characters, shot over three days. For much of the film, Sofia is going through a crisis that the audience cannot quite name, until that scene, when she becomes very vocal about it.

Cruz said that about a week before the shoot, things started to feel strange. She kept telling herself it could not be because of the scene that was coming. They were old enough not to let it affect them, she said, but it did. She called it a natural process of finding some truth.

This is the scene that tests the rule. The reason for not working together was to keep the job out of the marriage. By Cruz's own account, a week of the marriage went into the job.

How Bunker was made

• Announced: May 1, 2025, then presented at the Marché du Film in Cannes later that month.
• Inspiration: Zeller cited The Man Next Door, by Mariano Cohn and Andrés Duprat, who are executive producers on Bunker. The film includes Spanish dialogue.
• Cast: Stephen Graham (announced May 16, 2025), Patrick Schwarzenegger (November 2025) and Paul Dano, reported in December 2025 when filming was already in its second week.
• Shoot: began in December 2025, mostly in Madrid, with a week in London, and was completed by February 9, 2026.
• Crew: cinematographer Ben Smithard, editor Yorgos Lamprinos, music by Volker Bertelmann. Running time 126 minutes.
• Producers: a French-Spanish co-production from Federica Sainte-Rose and Zeller for Blue Morning Pictures, Fernando Bovaira and Simón de Santiago of MOD Producciones, and Alice Dawson. Pathé's Ardavan Safaee and Mediawan's Pierre-Antoine Capton co-produce. Deadline's write-up spells the Spanish producer's name "Bovaria".

The reviews are already in

Bunker is not a new film to critics. It premiered in competition at the 83rd Venice Film Festival on September 8 and then played Toronto, Zurich and the BFI London Film Festival.

• Rotten Tomatoes: 55% positive from 31 reviews, average 5.4/10.
• Metacritic: 52 out of 100, from 16 critics, "mixed or average".
• The Hollywood Reporter: "flawed but compelling".
• IndieWire: a C grade.

Sony Pictures Classics, which released Zeller's The Father and The Son, has North American rights and plans an awards-qualifying run in late 2026 before a wider US release in early 2027. Spain gets it on February 12, 2027 through Elastica; Pathé handles France, Switzerland and West Africa. The Contenders stage came a month after those mixed reviews.

What is still unknown

• Australian release. No local distributor or date has been announced.
• The exact US dates for the qualifying run and the wider release.
• Whether the couple's rule survives Bunker. Nothing new together has been announced.

Cruz and Bardem say they keep work and marriage apart to protect the relationship. They have now made six films together, and the one about a marriage under strain is the one that, by her account, followed them home.