Tony Gilroy's 'Behemoth!' gets a first trailer and a December 4 release from Searchlight

Tony Gilroy has not directed a movie since 2012. The wait is over, and it involves Pedro Pascal and a cello.

Searchlight put out the first trailer for Behemoth! this week and dated it for December 4, dropping it straight into the middle of the awards-season corridor. The footage is the news, but the byline underneath it is the reason to pay attention. Gilroy wrote and directed this, his first feature behind the camera since The Bourne Legacy. The last time he made something this personal, it was Michael Clayton, which is still one of the best American movies of its decade.

What it is

Pascal plays Alex Serian, a gifted cellist who comes back to Los Angeles after twenty years on the road. Searchlight's logline is deliberately vague: music, "the constant, all-consuming river of his life," starts carrying him somewhere that changes him. The trailer keeps its cards close too. You get a man, an instrument, a city, and a mood that tips from concert-hall hush toward something stranger. Pascal appears to do a lot of his own playing, and the trailer sells that. When an actor actually holds the bow, you can tell.

Gilroy has been gone from features long enough that some people know him now only as the guy who made Andor, the best thing to come out of the Star Wars machine in years. He brought that crew with him. Damián García, who shot Andor, is the cinematographer. His brother John Gilroy, a fixture in his edit bays going back to Michael Clayton, cut it.

The cast kept changing

Behind the scenes, this one had a revolving door. Oscar Isaac was originally set to play the cellist when the project was announced in early 2025. He left, and Pascal stepped in. David Harbour signed on as a co-star, then exited in January and was replaced by Will Arnett. What survived all the shuffling is a deep bench: Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor (fresh off Sorry, Baby), Matthew Lillard, Margarita Levieva, and Alexa Swinton fill out the ensemble around Pascal.

Nine composers, which tells you something

The music is not a footnote here. Gilroy hired nine composers for the score, among them James Newton Howard, Alan Silvestri, Michael Giacchino, and Michael Abels. Howard has scored every feature Gilroy has directed, from Michael Clayton through Duplicity and Bourne Legacy, so his presence is a signature. Nine names on a score is not a normal choice. For a movie whose lead spends it married to an instrument, that is a statement of intent.

Why December

Searchlight does not put movies on December 4 by accident. That slot is prestige real estate, the same stretch of calendar where the studio has parked awards plays before. Pairing a filmmaker with a Michael Clayton pedigree, a movie star doing visible, difficult craft, and a title with an exclamation point begging to be noticed, the studio is clearly swinging for nominations. Whether the movie earns them is a different question, and the trailer is careful not to answer it. That is usually a good sign. The teasers that show you everything tend to be the ones with nothing to hide behind.

I will hold any verdict until there is a movie to watch. But a Gilroy original, built around a performance that asks the lead to actually do the thing, is the most interesting thing Searchlight has on its December calendar. It goes on the list.