"Behemoth!" to Premiere at New York Film Festival with Tony Gilroy and Pedro Pascal in Attendance

Searchlight Pictures' Behemoth! is coming to the New York Film Festival, with the upcoming Tony Gilroy-directed movie set to make its world premiere at the event in October.

What's Happening:

• The new Searchlight release Behemoth!, written and directed by Andor creator Tony Gilroy and starring Pedro Pascal, will debut at the 64th New York Film Festival.
• The world premiere of Behemoth! will take place at NYFF on Friday, October 2 at the Alice Tully Hall, in the middle of a festival that runs from September 25 through October 12.
• Gilroy and Pascal will be in attendance, along with other members of the cast.
• The NYFF announcement comes with a bit more of a plot description for the film than we've gotten so far, reading, "A former child prodigy living in the shadow of a storied musical family, Alex has left his position with an orchestra in Chicago—fleeing a soured relationship with a manic ex (a piledriving Olivia Wilde)—and returned to Los Angeles to record Hollywood film scores and resolve unfinished family business. Using a deft flashback structure to weave in and out of his adult life, while cleverly employing a panoply of original movie compositions to both accompany and comment upon them, Gilroy turns Alex’s desire for stability, meaning, and redemption into a sophisticated drama of the highest order."
• Along with Pascal and Wilde, the cast includes Eva Victor, Alexa Swinton, Kaya Ralls, Erik Griffin, JoBeth Williams, and Margarita Levieva, with Hank Azaria and Will Arnett.

• In the film, Alex's job working on film scores involves numerous fake movies that are part of the background of the story, and Gilroy recruited an impressive group of real life composers to write the excerpts of those scores heard in Behemoth!, including Michael Abels (Get Out, Nope), Emily Bear (Dog Gone), Lukas Frank (East of Wall), Michael Giacchino (The Incredibles, Rogue One), James Newton Howard (Treasure Planet, The Hunger Games), Henry Jackman (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Wreck-It Ralph), Nami Melumad (Thor: Love and Thunder, Star Trek: Prodigy), Brandon Roberts (Underwater, Thanksgiving), and Alan Silvestri (The Avengers, Back to the Future).
• After its NYFF premiere, Behemoth! opens to the public on December 4th.
• Pascal of course will have a very busy December, with the release of Behemoth! followed by another intimate character study, Avengers: Doomsday, on December 18. That film recently debuted new footage at San Diego Comic-Con over the weekend.

What They're Saying:

• Tony Gilroy: “I have been orbiting NYFF for the great majority of my life. I was baptized by Fitzcarraldo. I was tending bar across the street and a customer tipped me a single ticket. It was a bad seat to the most remarkable screening I’d ever attended. There were many memorable nights to follow. The Centerpiece invitation is a fantasy I’ve conjured more times than I care to admit. NYFF has always been the benchmark for me; the opportunity to premiere a film I cannot wait to show, in that hall, to that audience, feels every bit as thrilling as I’d imagined. I’m honored.”
• Dennis Lim, NYFF Artistic Director: “We are delighted to present the world premiere of Tony Gilroy’s anticipated return to the big screen as this year’s NYFF Centerpiece. There is so much to savor in this immaculately crafted film, from its creative use of music to its note-perfect ensemble cast. Holding it all together is a tour de force by Pedro Pascal, one of the performances of the year from one of our true movie stars.”