Chazelle revealed in an interview with Vanity Fair that the idea for Babylon’s premise came to him when he was just 15 years old. Now that the director is 37, he is finally translating this dream into the big screen. But one thing to look forward to in Babylon is its star-studded cast. Here’s what we know about Babylon so far:
When Is Babylon Release Date?
Although Chazelle had been thinking about the premise of the story since he was 15-years-old, the plans for the film didn’t happen until July 2019. Lionsgate was initially the frontrunner to acquire the film’s rights. But in November 2019, Paramount Pictures was able to secure ownership. Filming was scheduled to take place in California in the middle of 2020. But with the delays caused by the pandemic, filming was pushed to a later date of July 1, 2021. They finished filming on October 21, 2021. The good news is that you don’t have to wait too long for Babylon to make its premiere. Paramount Pictures revealed on September 13th that the film is scheduled for a limited theatrical release on December 25th, 2022. After that, the movie will have a worldwide release date on January 6, 2023. When it launches, Babylon will be Chazelle’s most expensive project with a $110 million budget. The movie is expected to have a total runtime of three hours and eight minutes.
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What is Babylon Story About?
The movie is set in Hollywood in the 1920s at a time when movies were making the transition to talkies instead of silent films. Paramount lists the official synopsis of Babylon as: “From Damien Chazelle, Babylon is an original epic set in 1920s Los Angeles led by Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, with an ensemble cast including Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li and Jean Smart. A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.” Babylon is neither a musical or based on a book. But in 2019, the screenplay’s draft was leaked online. We don’t know for sure whether the final screenplay will include plot details from the leaked draft.
In the same Vanity Fair interview, Chazelle shared: “Everything is shifting underneath people’s feet, and I became really fascinated by the human cost of disruption at that magnitude, at a time when there was no road map, when everything was just new and wild." Chazelle also said that Babylon was “the hardest thing” that he ever did in his career thus far. “Just the logistics of it, the number of characters, the scale of the set pieces, the span of time that the movie charts – it all conspired to make it particularly challenging, but it was a challenge that was pretty exciting to take on.”
Who’s Part of Babylon Cast?
Babylon is a star-studded project that includes some of the biggest and brightest names in Hollywood. The list includes the following:
Brad Pitt (as Jack Conrad)Margot Robbie (as Nellie LaRoy)Diego Calva (as Manny Torres)Li Jun Li (as Lady Fay Zhu)Jovan Adepo (as Sidney Palmer)Jean Smart (as Elinor St. John)Tobey Maguire (as James McKay)Jeff Garlin (as Don Wallach)Olivia WildeSamara WeavingKatherine WaterstonMax MinghellaFleaSpike JonzeChloe FinemanLukas HaasRory ScovelEric RobertsP.J. ByrneDamon GuptonPhoebe TonkinTroy MetcalfTevlin Griffin
Is There a Babylon Trailer Online?
Yes, Paramount Pictures released the first official trailer of Babylon on September 12th. This comes a day after the movie made its premier at the Toronto International Film Festival. You can watch the trailer here:
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