This summer has been filled with big-budget, spectacle-driven alien movies, but the new trailer for director Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival suggests that the film could be a different kind of extraterrestrial tale.
Paramount Pictures released the first trailer for the film this week, and it offers an early peek at stars Amy Adams (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Jeremy Renner (Avengers: Age of Ultron), and Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) attempting to figure out the best course of action when mysterious spacecraft suddenly arrive on Earth at various locations around the globe.
Inspired by Ted Chiang’s 1998 novella Stories of Your Life and based on a script penned by Eric Heisserer (The Thing), Arrival casts Adams as a brilliant linguist who’s recruited by the military to establish communication between the aliens and humans.
With the Prisoners and Sicario director behind the camera, the film also boasts a talented cast in front of it. In addition to Adams, Renner, and Whitaker, the supporting cast includes Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man), Mark O’Brien (Republic of Doyle), and Tzi Ma (Rush Hour).
First published in 1998, Chiang’s novella was the winner of the prestigious Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2000, as well as the 1999 Sturgeon award, and was celebrated for its exploration of the relationship between linguistic theories and our concept of determination. The novella was first published in the second edition of the Starlight anthology series for original science-fiction stories.
Arrival will have its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, then screen at the Toronto International Film Festival before its wide release on November 11.