James Gray’s Ad Astra has gotten a final trailer ahead of its premiere at the Venice Film Festival. The Lost City of Z director’s sci-fi adventure is finally ready to hit theaters in September, after being delayed a couple times (first to allow more time for its effects to be finalized, then because of the Disney-Fox deal). It’s one of two potential Oscar contenders in the pipeline for Fox this fall - along with James Mangold’s true story-inspired racing drama Ford v. Ferrari - and will hit the festival circuit in an effort to further drum up interest ahead of its regular release.
Brad Pitt stars in Ad Astra as Roy McBride, an astronaut who ventures to the outer edges of the solar system in order to find his long-missing father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones), and discover if he’s behind a mystery threatening the survival of humankind on earth. Gray directed the movie from a script he wrote with Ethan Gross (Fringe), with Ruth Negga, Liv Tyler, and Donald Sutherland joining Pitt and Jones in the cast. Now, Ad Astra has received one last “special look” in honor of its global premiere this week.
Empire Magazine has exclusively debuted Ad Astra’s Venice Film Festival trailer, ahead of its debut at the festival tomorrow (Thursday, August 29). You can check it out in the space below.
The Ad Astra Venice Film Festival preview starts off in the same vein as the previous trailers, showing Roy as he undergoes physical and psychological testing before he sets off to space in search of his father. However, things start to get increasingly bizarre in the trailer’s second half, beginning with a glimpse of Negga’s character, Helen Lantos, chilling at what appears to be a futuristic rave of sorts. The footage only gets weirder and more intense from there, with shots of Roy being attacked by and battling an angry monkey in zero-gravity, Jones looking furious and unhinged, and Roy finding himself in all manner of life-threatening situations as he journeys deeper and deeper into space. Gray has said one of his goals with Ad Astra was to show how hostile space truly is, and this new trailer alone certainly does that.
Assuming Ad Astra is well-received in Venice, it will be interesting to see if this has any real impact on its box office. The film continues to impress visually with every new piece of footage and seems like it’s worth checking out in IMAX when it opens next month, but it’s far from a sure bet commercially. After all, Gray’s movies typically only play in arthouse theaters, with 2007’s We Own the Night being easily his highest-grossing project with only $54 million worldwide. Then again, Pitt is a pretty reliable draw and is coming off the success of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Combine that with the popularity of similar space adventures like Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian in recent years, and Ad Astra may yet give Fox the hit it’s searching for.
Source: Empire Magazine
- Ad Astra Release Date: 2019-09-20
