The Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! (not to be confused with 1994’s Hail Caesar, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Anthony Michael Hall), stars George Clooney as the kidnapped star of a Hollywood Roman epic, with Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson as hot young stars, Ralph Fiennes as a pretentious director, and Josh Brolin as the studio fixer. It also stars Jonah Hill, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton, and– STOP DRILLIN’, YOU’VE STRUCK OIL. Nonetheless, here’s the official studio synopsis:
Four-time Oscar-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, True Grit, Fargo) write and direct Hail, Caesar!, an all-star comedy set during the latter years of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Starring Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and Channing Tatum, Hail, Caesar! follows a single day in the life of a studio fixer who is presented with plenty of problems to fix.
Honestly, I’m sold based on the costuming alone. Hail, Caesar! will reportedly complete the Coens’ “Idiot Tetralogy,” (formerly the Idiot Trilogy, alternatively the Idiot Quadrilogy) that includes O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Intolerable Cruelty, and Burn After Reading. But if you ask me, this looks like it was a great excuse for the Coens to shoot an entire movie that looks like the dream sequence in Big Lebowski (with Big Lebowski cinematographer Roger Deakins returning for his first Coen Brothers movie since True Grit). He doesn’t show up in the trailer, but according to IMDb, there’s also a “submarine commander” played by Dolph Lundgren.
Not to get hyperbolic here, but if I die of excitement watching this, I want my tombstone to say “F*CK YES.”
Hail, Caesar! opens Feb. 5, 2016.