While we’re still a few weeks away from the film’s official release, Damien Chazelle’s three-plus-hour Babylon has now been unleashed for select press and industry and response has, expectedly, been wildly divisive. Led by Diego Calva, Margot Robbie, and Brad Pitt, the Jazz Age-set epic Babylon lavishly captures Hollywood’s transition from silents to talkies. Also starring Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, P.J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Olivia Hamilton, Tobey Maguire, Max Minghella, Rory Scovel, Katherine Waterston, Flea, Jeff Garlin, Eric Roberts, Ethan Suplee, Samara Weaving, and Olivia Wilde, a new trailer has now been released.
“They are building a city from scratch and an industry from scratch. It was about capturing the spirit of that time, which I’d say was a lot more wild west,” Chazelle said at TIFF, saying to expect “excess, more drugs, more extreme living on all ends of the spectrum.” Drawing inspiration from La Dolce Vita, Nashville, and The Godfather, he added they are “old-school epics that managed, through a handful of characters, to convey a society changing.”
Watch the new trailer below:
Babylon opens wide on December 23.