The first trailer for Noah Baumbach’s upcoming film White Noise is here.
Based on Don DeLillo’s 1987 novel of the same name, the film will star Adam Driver, Don Cheadle and Greta Gerwig and will focus on the “hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic” American experience.
Adam Driver stars as college professor Jack Gladney, who lives with his wife Babette (played by Greta Gerwig) in a small midwestern town, along with four of their seven children from previous marriages. The family’s predictable suburban existence is thrown into chaos when a nearby chemical leak causes “The Airborne Toxic Event,” forcing the Gladney family to evacuate.
The story was at one point deemed “unfilmable,” with multiple studios and directors trying to transform the nihilistic novel into a contemplatable viewing experience. Noah Baumbach’s film had previously debuted on August 31 at the Venice Film Festival, making it the first-ever Netflix film to premiere at the festival on opening night.
“It is a great honor to open the 79th Venice Film Festival with White Noise,’” festival chief Alberto Barbera had said at the time. “Adapted from the great Don DeLillo novel, Baumbach has made an original, ambitious, and compelling piece of art which plays with measure on multiple registers: dramatic, ironic, satirical. The result is a film that examines our obsessions, doubts, and fears as captured in the 1980s, yet with very clear references to contemporary reality.”
White Noise premiers on Netflix on Dec. 30. Check out the trailer above.