Eddington Movie Reveals Final Trailer
A24 has revealed the final trailer for the Eddington movie, the upcoming Western black comedy written and directed by Ari Aster. The film had its world premiere at the main competition of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival on May 16.
Opening in theaters on July 18, the Eddington movie has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) for strong violence, some grisly images, language, and graphic nudity.
From writer-director Ari Aster comes a modern Western and paranoid thriller set in the American Southwest during the tumultuous summer of 2020. Isolated and sheltered in place, in a global pandemic, a nation under pressure found itself sifting reality through the haze of social media and lost its collective mind.
Eddington stars Joaquin Phoenix as small-town sheriff Joe Cross, who runs for mayor when progressive incumbent Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) attempts to modernize their dusty hamlet by attracting a new artificial-intelligence data center.
Aster’s fourth feature takes the form of a classic showdown between two opposing forces over the future of Eddington, New Mexico (population 2,345), as spiraling conspiracies and standoffs derail a citizenry pushed to the brink.
“We all know that we’re in our own echo chambers because we’re trapped in a system based on feedback,” Aster said about the film. “The problem is that people can’t remember that they know that. Eddington is about what happens when feedback ramps up beyond control and the bubbles collide.”
Featuring an ensemble supporting cast of townspeople grappling with a changing world, the Eddington movie also stars Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Luke Grimes, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Clifton Collins Jr., William Belleau, Amélie Hoeferle, Cameron Mann, and Matt Gomez Hidaka.
“Eddington is a microcosm of the early days of COVID, something we all went through together, and the aftermath of that,” says Grimes, who plays Deputy Sheriff Guy Tooley opposite the embattled Sheriff Joe. “It’s a small town that stands in for all of America and how the events of one summer put fear into us and brought the country to a boiling point.”
Yet more than anything, the film is driven by the absurdity of everything that came out of that summer and the five years that followed. Eddington frequently plays out as a dark comedy, because after all, if you can’t laugh at today’s American circus, you’ll surely cry.
“Make no mistake: I don’t think anything that’s happening right now is funny, but it is all absurd,” Aster added. “And the insidious thing about our culture is that it’s scary and dangerous and catastrophic, and also ridiculous and stupid and impossible to take seriously.”
Despite that absurdity, he said, “I wanted to make a film that felt like the country we live in without necessarily villainizing anyone or propping anyone up. I hope it’s democratic in the way that it gives equal weight to every instrument in the cacophony. And in the end, whatever our differences of opinion, we have to find a way to re-engage with each other.
“The powers of tech and finance have kept us frozen and in our individual silos, but we’re all in the same situation. We all know that something’s very seriously wrong.” Phoenix adds simply that, for better or worse, “I hope audiences recognize our world in the film.”
Production for the film began in March 2024, with Aster writing, directing, and producing alongside Lars Knudsen under their Square Peg production company. A24 financed and produced the movie.
Two-time Academy Award nominee Darius Khondji (Evita, Bardo) serves as the director of photography, and the music is by composer Bobby Krlic (Ari Aster’s Midsommar and Beau Is Afraid).
