Brad Pitt's Jack Conrad and Diego Calva's Manny Torres have their work cut out in the new trailer for Damien Chazelle's Babylon as they try to rein in Margot Robbie's party animal actress Nellie LaRoy. Ahead of the comedy-drama's release on December 23, Paramount Pictures has unveiled a new look at the star-studded, 1920s-set flick – and boy, does it look wild...
Previously described as "The Great Gatsby on steroids", Babylon explores the effects of the film industry's transition from silent pictures to "talkies", through the stories of a select few in the movie-making business. Tobey Maguire, Li Jun Li, Katherine Waterston, Max Minghella, and Olivia Wilde also feature in the movie, which marks Oscar-winner Chazelle's follow-up to Whiplash, La La Land, and First Man.
The riotous fresh clip, which you can watch above, opens on a party scene, as Manny tells Nellie about how he "always wanted to be a part of something bigger".
"You know, when I first moved to LA, you know what all the signs on all the doors read?" Conrad asks Jean Smart's disgruntled-looking Elinor St. John in a later scene. "No actors or dogs allowed. I changed that." Something tells us this one's got a big ego to go with his big dreams...
We also get our first-look at Samara Weaving in the film, who, rather amusingly, seems to be acting opposite Robbie's lookalike Nellie. "This bitch is stealing the scene right from under me," Weaving's character shrieks, as an unbothered Nellie falls back onto a prop couch. "She's icing her nipples so they perk up through her dress!"
"I ain't icing my nipples, this is natural," she argues, before the camera hilariously cuts to her shoving cubes down her dress backstage.
"The girl seems nice," Li Jun Li's Lady Fay Zhu ponders aloud to Conrad elsewhere. "She is," he replies, as a montage shows Nellie succumbing to and then trying to rise above the alluring call of Hollywood's corrupting hedonism and decadence. "She has no idea what's next."
Jovan Adepo, Red Hot Chilli Peppers bassist Flea, Max Minghella, Rory Scovel (I Feel Pretty), Eric Roberts (The Dark Knight), PJ Byrne (The Wolf of Wall Street), Chloe Fineman (Saturday Night Live), and Damon Gupton (Criminal Minds) round out Babylon's ensemble cast. The film is set to be shown in select US cinemas from December 23, before releasing in the UK on January 20.
In the meantime, check out our breakdown of the most exciting upcoming movies coming our way in 2022 and beyond.
