‘Asteroid City’ Trailer: Wes Anderson (Maybe) Brings Aliens to Earth with 11th Feature

Wes Anderson fans are about to be over the moon. The first trailer for “Asteroid City,” the Oscar-nominated “Royal Tenenbaums” and “Grand Budapest Hotel” director’s 11th feature film, has been released, giving fans their first look at the ensemble film ahead of its June theatrical premiere.

“Asteroid City” is named after its setting, a tiny town off the freeway and in the middle of the American desert. Set in 1955, the movie takes place during the town’s annual “Junior Stargazer and Space Cadet” convention, celebrated during “Asteroid Day,” which — according to Jeffrey Wright in the trailer — commemorates “September 23, 3,007 B.C.,” when a meteorite made impact in the town’s current location.

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Anderson favorite Jason Schwartzman leads the cast of the film as a widowed father who gets stranded in the town with his four children and begs his father-in-law (Tom Hanks) to come get them. While there, he develops a connection with a famous actress (Scarlett Johansson), and his son (Jake Ryan, who had small roles in Anderson’s “Moonlight Kingdom” and “Isle of Dogs”) participates in the various Junior Stargazer lessons on the solar system — much of which is outdated and not entirely accurate. But after a UFO and an alien seemingly arrive on the scene, the U.S. government quarantines the town, putting the Asteroid Day celebrations on a hold.

Judging by the trailer, the film features a lot of Anderson’s signature elements, including pastel-colored production design, droll dialogue, a retro aesthetic, and a heavy dose of melancholy underneath all of the quirkiness.

“In my loneliness, I have learned to give complete and unquestioning faith in the people I love,” Hanks says in the trailer to Schwartzman. “I don’t know if that includes you, but it included my daughter and your four children.”

Like Anderson’s last film “The French Dispatch,” an anthology of three disparate stories, “Asteroid City” features an absolutely massive ensemble cast. Previous Anderson collaborators like Johansson, Wright, Schwartzman, Ryan, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Liev Schreiber, Fisher Stevens, Rupert Friend, Tony Revolori, Jarvis Cocker, and Steve Park are all among the faces in the desert.

New to Wes’ World for “Asteroid City” are Hanks, Margot Robbie, Hong Chau, Steve Carell, Maya Hawke, Matt Dillon, and Sophia Lillis. Behind the scenes, several of Anderson’s prior collaborators contributed to the film, including his longtime cinematographer Robert Yeoman, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” editor Barney Pilling, and Alexandre Desplat, who has composed the music for all of Anderson’s films since 2009.

“Asteroid City” is the first of two Anderson films expected to premiere this year. In the fall, Netflix will release“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1977 short story collection; the project is Anderson’s second Dahl adaptation after he turned “Fantastic Mr. Fox” into a critically-acclaimed stop-motion feature in 2009. Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Henry Sugar, and the film also features Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, Richard Ayoade, and Friend, pulling double duty and starring in both Anderson projects.

Focus Features will release “Asteroid City” in select theaters June 16, followed by an expanded rollout June 23; the movie is Anderson’s first for Focus since 2012’s “Moonlight Kingdom,” after “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Isle of Dogs,” and “The French Dispatch” were all distributed by Searchlight Pictures.

Watch the full trailer for “Asteroid City” below.

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