We're entering the summer's twilight and on the horizon is the fall with its promise of awards-worthy dramas. One of the most anticipated of the season will be Arrival, the sci-fi drama from Prisoners and Sicario director Denis Villeneuve, with Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, and Michael Stuhlbarg starring. Villeneuve has a pretty good track record of lifting genre into prestige territory, and he may be about to do it again.
USA Today has the first look at Adams and Renner in the film about a linguist who is part of an elite team called in when extraterrestrials arrive on Earth. Describing her character, Adams says, “She felt real, like somebody I would know and somebody I would like to have a conversation with. Emotionally, the journey she takes in this was devastating to me."
It definitely sounds high concept, but Renner says the tone is like“if you blended a [Stanley] Kubrick and a [Steven] Spielberg movie", and “If you’re a parent, it’s going to wreck you. It’s big and there are thriller elements and tension, but it’s going to lean much more into a thinking person’s film.”
Arrival, based on Ted Chiang's novella Story of Your Life, opens November 11th but will screen at Toronto and Venice first.
