Sony Pictures has unveiled the official trailer for A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a romance-fantasy film starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell as two emotionally stuck strangers who end up on an unexpectedly surreal trip through time, memory, and feeling. Take a look above and dive deeper below.
Directed by Kogonada (After Yang, Columbus), the film follows Sarah (Robbie) and David (Farrell), who cross paths at a friend’s wedding before their lives are abruptly rerouted—literally—by a rogue GPS. What starts as a quirky detour quickly unravels into something far more existential, as the pair discover a mysterious portal that sends them into their own pasts, allowing them to witness—and reassess—formative moments that shaped who they are.
More on Screen Realm:
“It’s kind of a love story, but it’s not a very typical one,” Farrell said in an interview with Collider. “It’s definitely magical realism. It’s grounded in a world that we recognize, but it also is removed enough into the world of fantastical that it goes into these kinds of whimsical places.”
With its whimsical tone and imaginative premise, the film explores ideas of second chances and self-forgiveness. Farrell explained, “They’re both terrible at relationships. Neither have been able to find a moment’s joy in relationships or companionship. And they begin to find that through each other, as a result of this one night where they go on this fantastical journey and get to see from an objective perspective these moments in their lives that… were very formative, and get to take accountability for times where they hurt people.”
The trailer blends warm, vibrant cinematography with gentle humour and romantic melancholy, teasing sequences of dreamy landscapes and philosophical turns. For Farrell, working on the film was a welcome shift from the gritty darkness of his recent HBO series The Penguin, which he wrapped filming just three weeks before starting on A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. “It was a good antidote to the darkness of The Penguin because the film is about healing and it’s about life and it’s about finding love, and it’s about finding self-acceptance,” Farrell said. “So, it was a lovely antidote for me because it was tender.”
The film is written by Seth Reiss (The Menu) with Kogonada also contributing to the script. The behind-the-scenes team includes composer Joe Hisaishi (Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Departures), cinematographer Benjamin Loeb (After Yang, Mandy), and editor Susan E. Kim (Pachinko, A Small Light).
A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, with a cast that also includes Jodie Turner-Smith, Lily Rabe, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Hamish Linklater, opens in Australian cinemas on September 18 and in the U.S. on September 19.
