Paul Giamatti Brings the Grump to ‘The Holdovers’ Trailer

Paul Giamatti plays a curmudgeonly private school instructor at a New England prep school in the official trailer for Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, which dropped on Monday ahead of a Nov. 10 nationwide release for the period dramedy.

A grumpy Giamatti in the film teaser is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students unable to go home to their families. Eventually he forms an unlikely bond with one of them, Angus Tully, a damaged, brainy troublemaker played by newcomer Dominic Sessa, and with the school’s head cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who has just lost a son in Vietnam.

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“I find the world a bitter and complicated space, and it seems to feel the same about me. I think you and I have this in common,” Giamatti’s character, Paul Hunham, tells Angus at one point in the trailer as their relationship begins to thaw.

Giamatti, who was nominated for an Oscar for his work in the boxing drama Cinderella Man and starred alongside Damian Lewis in the financial drama Billions, has played a cranky and complicated character before, including in Barney’s Version, directed by Richard J. Lewis.

Focus Features picked up The Holdovers, which reunites Giamatti with Payne after their collaboration on Sideways, for a platform release that begins in New York City and Los Angeles on Oct. 27, before going wide on Nov. 10.

The Holdovers is written by David Hemingson, who also produces alongside Mark Johnson and Bill Block. Andrew Golov, Thom Zadra and Chris Stinson are executive producing.

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