This morning, Paramount Pictures unveiled the trailer for one of the year’s most anticipated films. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Damien Chazelle (La La Land) directs a fever dream of a movie set in Hollywood during the 1920s.
If the chaos depicted in the trailer is only a fraction of what we get in the film, then moviegoers are in for a treat. I mean, the second Margot Robbie snorted the Paramount logo like a line of coke, I knew this was going to be the best movie of the year.
Starring Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Diego Calva — with an ensemble cast including Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, and Jean Smart — Babylon is a tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess that traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.
While most of the characters in Babylon are fictional, many of them are based on real life Hollywood legends of the era. Pitt’s character is inspired by John Gilbert, while Robbie is playing a version of Clara Bow. However, I’m most intrigued by Wu Assassins star Li Jun Li, who will be portraying fictionalized version of Anna May Wong.

Babylon opens in select cities on December 25 for awards consideration, before being released wide on January 6, 2023.