The first trailer for upcoming sci-fi film Replicas was shown to eager audiences at New York City Comic Con on Thursday, October 5, showcasing a grief-stricken Keanu Reeves as he attempts to transfer the consciousness of his loved ones into new bodies.
The film follows Reeves’ character Dr. William Foster, a neuroscientist who is on the verge of being able to digitally transfer the consciousness of humans when his family is killed in a tragic car accident. In order to resurrect them, Dr. Foster recruits colleague Ed Whittle (Thomas Middleditch) to help clone them, with the major snag being that cloning is illegal and untested.
In the new trailer, Reeves’ character first appears in his lab, where he is struggling to complete a transfer of human consciousness into a robot. After a series of short cuts that includes shots of his family and of him working, his character’s wife (played by Star Trek star Alice Eve) walks into the room, at which point he explains to her that there has been an accident. From there, we see shots of him and his family in a car wreck, with their four bodies in bags on the floor of his house. After this, we only get allusions as to what may go awry in the film, with Thomas Middleditch’s character saying, “There is a reason cloning is illegal.”
Whether or not the film will become an all-out sci-fi horror flick remains to be seen, but there are certainly many intriguing possibilities as to how the scenario will eventually play out on screen.
Replicas is being produced by Reeves and production partner Stephen Hamel, with help from Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura. The script was written by Chad St. John (London Has Fallen) based on an original story by Hamel. The film is being directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, who is best known for writing. The Day After Tomorrow).
The upcoming film is currently in post-production, and the film is slated for release next year. Given Reeves’ history as a star of critically acclaimed science fiction films, including The Matrix trilogy, as well as his recent success in the John Wick series, there’s a good chance it will do well at the box office. We’ll update this post as we learn more about the film.
