Watch First Trailer: Bungling George Clooney Will Steal Your Hearts In Coen Brothers’ ‘Hail, Caesar!’
Just when you thought the George Clooney-Coen brothers triumvirate did not have any more tricks up their sleeves, they come out with a scorcher!
The first trailer of their latest release, Hail, Caesar!, which will come out on February 5, 2015, was released today by Universal Pictures, and it is already making fans drool in excitement.
A 1950s-set comedy about Hollywood’s Golden Age, Hail Caesar! stars George Clooney as Baird Whitlock, one of the most sought after actors during his generation, who goes missing in the middle of production on the biggest release of the year, according to Variety.
The movie’s other A-list stars include Coen brothers’ favorites Josh Brolin and Frances McDormand, as well as Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johannson, Tilda Swinton, and Channing Tatum, who plays a tap-dancer sailor within the meta-film that all of these people are involved in.
Being billed as an escapade, Hail, Caesar’s trailer boasts of many of Coen brothers’ trademark style elements, including kidnapping plot twists, wry humor, deadpan comedy, and starring some of Hollywood’s biggest stars back at their glamorous best.
Remarkably, the idea for Hail, Caesar! was first pitched by the Coens to studio executives as far back as in 2004, and was originally planned to be set in the 1920s and follow actors performing a play about ancient Rome. But after some initial hesitancy, the project was shelved until 2013, when it was announced that Hail, Caesar! was back in development. Last year, it was revealed that George Clooney would star in the movie as a matinee idol.
And though the first trailer certainly has a cheerful feel to it, composer Carter Burwell, who started his career with Coen brothers’ Blood Simple and has since composed for them a number of times, including scoring in Barton Film, Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing, among several others, warned that the movie is not all about gags, reports SlashFilm.
“I’m quite certain it’s actually going to be quite the opposite. It’s going to be rather serious, and it’s about faith. It’s not about the music.”
Burwell also noted that though Hail, Ceasar! will be a serious movie in many respects, it will cast a critical eye at what is unanimously considered Hollywood’s golden period. Because the movie is about movies, it gave Coen brothers the space to play around with Hollywood’s history and fill in with tongue-in-cheek references to Hollywood’s golden past, something the siblings excel at.
[Hail Caesar!] takes place on a Hollywood backlot, so you pass through all these pictures that are in production there.”
Almost the entirety of the shooting for Hail, Caesar! took place in downtown Los Angeles and began last December. As Vanity Fair noted in their report, its February release means the movie will not be surrounded by the Oscar brouhaha that usually marks each of Coen brothers’ movies.
“The film opens in the United States next February, which allows it to debut without the pounding Oscar hoopla that the no-nonsense Coens presumably have no patience for. Don’t assume that means bad things, though: Hail Caesar!, looking more like Barton Fink meets The Big Lebowski than a more stern Coens effort, could pull a Grand Budapest Hotel, opening to such warm reviews early in the year that it makes it into the Oscar race anyway.”
What do you think of George Clooney’s performance going by the first trailer of Hail, Caesar? Do you think Coen brothers will be able to reach the heights of their Oscar-winning films? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
[Photo via Universal Pictures / YouTube]
