Oscar-nominated writer/director Noah Baumbach reunites with two-time Oscar nominee Adam Driver and three-time Oscar nominee Greta Gerwig (his real-life partner) for White Noise, based on the book by Don DeLillo. The one-minute teaser trailer doesn’t give away much; if you haven’t read the book, odds are you’ll have no better idea what the film’s about after watching the trailer than you did before pressing play.
Netflix hasn’t set a premiere date for the comedy/drama which is embarking on a festival run before its wide release. White Noise is the opening night film at the Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2022 and will screen at the New York Film Festival in September.
“Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of White Noise is an unequivocal triumph: a wildly entertaining and morbidly funny meditation on the way we live now that is also the director’s most ambitious and expansive film,” said Dennis Lim, artistic director at NYFF. “Aided by a brilliant cast led by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, Baumbach has not only captured the essence of Don DeLillo’s beloved, era-defining book — he has turned it into a movie that speaks profoundly to our moment.”
Baumbach is returning to the Venice Film Festival after premiering Marriage Story there in 2019.
“It is a great honor to open the 79. Venice Film Festival with White Noise. It was worth waiting for the certainty that the film was finished to have the pleasure to make this announcement. 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 1980’s, yet with very clear references to contemporary reality,” said festival director Alberto Barbera.
Baumbach previously directed Adam Driver in Marriage Story, The Meyerowitz Stories New and Selected, While We’re Young, and Frances Ha. Baumbach and Greta Gerwig worked together on Mistress America, Frances Ha, and Greenberg.
The White Noise cast also includes Don Cheadle, Raffey Cassidy, Sam Nivola, May Nivola, Lars Eidinger, Andre Benjamin, and Jodie Turner-Smith. Baumbach’s behind-the-scenes team features director of photography Lol Crawley, production designer Jess Gonchor, editor Matthew Hannam, and costume designer Ann Roth, with music by Danny Elfman.
Netflix’s teaser trailer arrived along with a batch of photos and the following synopsis:
“At once hilarious and horrifying, lyrical and absurd, ordinary and apocalyptic, White Noise dramatizes a contemporary American family’s attempts to deal with the mundane conflicts of everyday life while grappling with the universal mysteries of love, death, and the possibility of happiness in an uncertain world.”
