Actor Diego Calva (Narcos: Mexico) leads a star-studded cast in the upcoming period dramedy Babylon from Academy Award-nominated writer and director Damien Chazelle (La La Land).
Set in 1920s Hollywood during the Jazz Era, Calva, who is originally from Mexico City, plays Manny Torres, an aspiring actor and immigrant from Mexico who comes to the U.S. with big dreams of becoming a star. The official synopsis for the film, which also stars Oscar winner Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood) and Oscar nominee Margot Robbie (I, Tonya) describes it as “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.”
“I wanted to capture just how big and bold and brash and unapologetic that world was,” Chazelle recently told Vanity Fair. “It was really a Wild West period for these people, this gallery of characters, as they rise and fall, rise, fall, rise again, fall again. The thing that they’re building is springing back on them and chewing them up.”
The official and uncensored trailer opens with Manny and Robbie’s character, Nellie LaRoy, an aspiring actress, snorting cocaine and talking about what they want out of life. “If you could go anywhere in the whole world, where would you go?” Nellie asks Manny. His response: “I always wanted to be part of something bigger. Something that lasts, that means something. Something more important than life.”
Chazelle then kicks open the door and introduces audiences to what show business was like a century ago, right around the time silent movies were on their way out and “talkies” were taking over the theaters. Manny and Nellie’s coke-fueled discussion carries the trailer into chaotic scenes where partying hard and staying in the spotlight seem to be the most important things to accomplish for everyone.
If becoming the next big movie star means you have to fight a rattlesnake, we’re here for it.
Babylon is scheduled for limited theatrical release on December 25, 2022, followed by a wide release on January 6, 2023.