Tom Hanks and Liev Schrieber Attempt to Escape with a Death Ray in New ‘Asteroid City’ Clip — Watch
It’s been two years since “The French Dispatch” hit theaters, but the wait for a new Wes Anderson movie is almost over. “Asteroid City,” the author’s eleventh sci-fi-tinged film, will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this week before expanding to theaters nationwide next month. To mark the occasion, Focus Features has released a new clip showing some of the film’s incredible actors in action.
“Asteroid City” sees Anderson return to the mid-century setting of “Moonrise Kingdom” to tell the story of a fictional desert city that hosts an annual “Junior Stargazer and Space Cadets” convention on “Asteroid Day.” The local holiday commemorates the day a meteor struck the city in 3007 BC
Like “The French Dispatch,” “Asteroid City” uses an anthology format to tell three overlapping stories. Tom Hanks plays a grieving father who finds himself stranded in Asteroid City with his grown children due to an extraterrestrial event at the astronomy festival. The new clip shows Hanks, Liev Schreiber and Hope Davis being held hostage by local security forces. They discuss the legality of leaving and the threat of aliens before Hanks’ character uses the captivity as an opportunity to flirt.
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In addition to Hanks, Schreiber and Davis, “Asteroid City” stars Margot Robbie, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Hong Chau, Steve Carell, Maya Hawke , Matt Dillon and Sofia Lillis. The screenplay was written by Anderson and his regular collaborator Roman Coppola, with whom he wrote “The Darjeeling Limited”, “Moonrise Kingdom”, “Isle of Dogs” and “The French Dispatch”.
‘Asteroid City’ is the first of two Wes Anderson films set to premiere in 2023. His next animated project, Roald Dahl’s adaptation ‘The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar’, will be released by Netflix later this year. ‘year. The stop motion film, which features the voice talents of Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel and Ben Kingsley, is part of Netflix’s larger effort to turn its recent acquisition of the Dahl estate into a new slate of film and television projects.
“Asteroid City” opens in select theaters on Friday, June 16 before expanding nationwide on June 23. Watch the new clip, an IndieWire exclusive, below.