begin quote from:
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/leave-the-world-behind-release-date-photos
Leave the World Behind: Everything to Know About the Apocalyptic Thriller
Leave the World Behind is here and it’s chilling. Starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke, the apocalyptic thriller from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail tells the story of two families as they fight for survival amid an inexplicable blackout. Only one thing’s for sure: There is no going back to normal. Technology is mysteriously on the fritz, and the deer around the families’ Long Island hideout are acting strange. You can see just how strange in the trailer above, and in a clip from the film below.
“I had been interested in doing a disaster movie for a while, and I specifically wanted to do one surrounding a cyber attack because I don’t think a lot of people have a concrete idea of what that would look like or how detrimental it would be, not just in America, but globally,” writer and director Esmail told Netflix. “The impact of technology on society is something that I’ve always been fascinated by because I really do think it dramatically changed the way we interact and evolve as people.”
The film is based on the bestselling 2020 novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, who also serves as executive producer of the film alongside Barack and Michelle Obama, Tonia Davis, Daniel M. Stillman, and Nick Krishnamurthy. Find out more below, and stay safe out there.
- Geeked Week 2023Yu Yu Hakusho Live-Action Series: Everything You Need to KnowDec. 14
- Geeked Week 2023Everything You Need to Know About DamselDec. 13
- Geeked Week 2023Meet the Interstellar Cast of Zack Snyder’s Rebel MoonDec. 7
- Geeked Week 2023Here’s Zack Snyder’s Full ‘Rebel Moon’ Interview from Geeked Week 2023Dec. 7
What is Leave the World Behind about?
In this apocalyptic thriller from award-winning writer and director Esmail (Mr. Robot), Amanda (Academy Award winner Roberts) and her husband, Clay (Academy Award nominee Hawke), rent a luxurious home for the weekend with their kids, Archie (Charlie Evans) and Rose (Farrah Mackenzie). Their vacation is soon upended when two strangers — G.H. (Academy Award winner Ali) and his daughter Ruth (Myha’la Herrold) — arrive in the night, bearing news of a mysterious cyberattack and seeking refuge in the house they claim is theirs. The two families reckon with a looming disaster that grows more terrifying by the minute, forcing everyone to come to terms with their places in a collapsing world. Based on the National Book Award–nominated novel by Alam, Leave the World Behind is produced by Esmail Corp, Red Om Films, and executive produced by Higher Ground Productions.
Is Leave the World Behind based on a book?
Yes. Leave the World Behind is drawn from Rumaan Alam’s bestselling, National Book Award-winning 2020 novel. “I read it in one sitting and then reread it a few hours later — the first time as a fan and the second time imagining it as a movie,” Esmail said. “What Rumaan did so well with this story is that he kept it centered on these characters and the journey they’re all on, and I found a way to expand upon my obsessions while translating it into a cinematic experience: What if technology was the driver behind this collapse?”
For his part, Alam found in Esmail the type of creative partner he’d been hoping would adapt his novel. “There’s a trust you have to establish with people as an artist, and in my first conversation with Sam, I trusted him and felt I understood him as an artist,” Alam said. “When he sent me the script, it felt as if I was seeing this story I had come up with being reborn, yet the emotional truth remained the same. It showed me that I had chosen a creative partner who enriched the story, deepened it, and created a different experience, but one with the same destination.”
In other words: have no fear, book lovers. “I have many colleagues and friends who are also novelists who’ve had their hearts broken in Hollywood. I never had that experience working on this project. I always felt like my book was in great hands,” Alam said.
What’s going on with the deer in Leave the World Behind?
In a clip from the movie below, Clay’s quest to fix an uncooperative television is interrupted by an eerie sight — the home is surrounded by a herd of silent, staring deer. Rose steps a bit closer, and the usually skittish animals don’t move. Is Bambi back for revenge? Something isn’t right, but no one has any idea exactly what’s happening.
Where was Leave the World Behind filmed?
The house at the center of Leave the World Behind is a real location; exterior shots and some interiors were filmed in Old Westbury, New York. In selecting the perfect layout, Esmail was looking for two things: an open kitchen and living room to allow for plenty of movement, and a pool within view of the kitchen. The production then built nearly 1:1 replicas of rooms in the home on studio soundstages in Bethpage, NY, which gave Esmail and company the time and space to capture the shots in the film that zoom through walls and floors.
“It had such a personality in terms of how it was laid out, this hallway with windows that could oversee the pool,” Esmail tells Tudum. “It just also, for us as filmmakers, gave us license to be able to move the camera, and interesting angles where I don't think we could have gotten away with that in other homes.”
Who is in the cast of Leave the World Behind?
Julia Roberts
Amanda Sandford is a New York City advertising executive who desperately needs a break from the real world and the people occupying her busy life. On a whim, she books a weekend family getaway in a gorgeous house on Long Island with her husband and two kids — but her vacation bliss is soon spoiled when the owners arrive in the middle of the night, seeking to hunker down in the midst of a blackout. Though she comes across as privileged and shortsighted at times, Amanda is a no-nonsense woman who’s able to put her stubbornness aside when it comes to protecting her family.
Known for her award-winning performances in Erin Brockovich and Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts brings a natural charm to her portrayal of Amanda. She also serves as a producer on the film. “She's just a wildly challenging character,” Roberts told Netflix of Amanda. “She’s complicated and surprising, and the main reason I took on this role — aside from wanting to work with Sam Esmail again — was the challenge. There are a lot of fine lines in making her understood, but not too unlikeable.”
Esmail, who had previously directed Roberts in 2018’s Homecoming, knew immediately that “Amanda was Julia.”
“What’s really great about casting someone like Julia Roberts is that you don’t have to worry about the likeability factor,” he told Netflix. “Julia has the uncanny ability to channel the humanity out of any character, regardless of how flawed they may be.”
Pretty Woman, Erin Brockovich, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Eat Pray Love, Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, Closer, Runaway Bride, Steel Magnolias, Notting Hill
Mahershala Ali
G.H. Scott is a well-connected financial advisor in New York City who trusts his instincts that the blackouts affecting the city might be part of something bigger. He leaves the city with his daughter Ruth, and they head to their vacation home. There, they’re met with a stubborn Amanda who wants them gone.
Mahershala Ali is an award-winning actor, known for his range of complex characters — from dramas like True Detective and Moonlight to family fun animation like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. That ability to juggle tone and genres is exactly what drew Esmail to Ali for the role of G.H. “Mahershala’s poignant everyman quality mixed with his undeniable charisma make it nearly impossible for him to deliver a substandard performance,” Esmail told Netflix. “That was what G.H. needed, a deep-hearted accessibility that lets him be your avatar into the story.”
For Ali, the role offered that most exciting acting opportunity: a challenge. “I think what attracted me to this character was that I wasn't sure if I could do it,” Ali told Netflix. “There were things about his life — being in finance, working with the 1 percent of the 1 percent — however much success I've had or however long I’ve been around people who've had a lot of success, that's something that's still difficult for me to relate to. So if anything, I was excited about the challenge of bringing this character to life and finishing up each day feeling like I believed myself.”
House of Cards, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Swan Song, Ramy, True Detective, Hidden Figures, Moonlight
Ethan Hawke
Clay Sandford is Amanda’s husband, a media studies professor who’s comfortable being the easygoing counterpart to his more strong-willed wife. But when the power goes out, Clay is completely helpless, struggling to problem-solve through a crisis.
Four-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke is an actor, director, author, and father to Stranger Things star Maya Hawke. In his portrayal of Clay, Esmail saw “one of the more fascinating characters in this film.”
“Clay as a character is so interesting because he upends everything you’d expect from the patriarch of the family. He’s the guy that’s usually portrayed as the sturdy, flawless hero of the story. And he isn’t,” Esmail told Netflix. “What Ethan did with him is so difficult to pull off because he took a character that disappoints himself and his family in small and big ways throughout the story — but instead of begrudging him for it, you instantly relate to him that much more because of it. That’s a magic trick that’s not only hard to pull off, but it’s just something I’ve never quite seen rendered on screen in such a pure and vulnerable way,” he added.
“I think the most interesting aspect about Clay is how much I don’t enjoy playing him!” Hawke said. “I’ve spent much of my life trying not to be Clay. The characters in this film are dealing with the ramifications of their own personal blind spots as individuals and as a society, and Clay represents that in its most egregious form: somebody who means well and does nothing. That could be said for so many of us, and in a lot of ways, you don’t want to be too judgmental of Clay because you can very quickly become judgmental of yourself. “
Dead Poets Society, Boyhood, Training Day, First Reformed, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Black Phone, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight
Myha’la
Ruth is G.H.’s 25-year-old daughter who has no problem calling out her elders, whether it’s for her own father’s evasiveness or Amanda’s shortsightedness.
Myha’la is a promising young actor who’s been cast in a range of roles, from the romance anthology Modern Love to the drama of Industry and the horror comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies. “She’s amazing,” Esmail told Netflix about working with the actor. “Ruth is written as this really sort of brazen, overly confident person, but then there are quiet moments where her fears get the best of her. Myha’la has the range to effortlessly move from one extreme to the other, sometimes from scene to scene, sometimes from word to word.”
In Alam’s book, Ruth is G.H.’s wife, not his daughter; both the author and Esmail agreed the change would add a necessary millennial perspective to the film’s characters. “I thought changing Ruth from the wife to the daughter was a clever move on Sam Esmail’s part,” Myha’la said. “Her generation interacts with technology and media in a different way from everyone else in the film. So she becomes this interesting intersection of wealth, race, gender, age, and as a result, she can feel a bit like a contradiction. She’s young and woke, but she still judges people for their background. She’s a minority in every sense of the word, except for the fact that she grew up with money and opportunities.”
Industry, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Black Mirror, Premature, Dumb Money
Farrah Mackenzie
Rose Sandford is Amanda and Clay’s younger child, whose binge watch of Friends is interrupted by a mysterious blackout.
Mackenzie’s portrayal of Rose really brought a mysterious and fascinating quality to the character, Esmail told Netflix. “She has this otherworldly quality just in her eyes,” he said. “That was one of the things that really drew me to her audition. I found myself always wondering what she was thinking.”
“Rose kind of lives in her own world,” Mackenzie said. “She's curious and inquisitive and she's kind of the first one to realize or see the beginning of these strange happenings going on. She wants to know more about what's happening and nobody is telling her anything. I think Rose feels alone a lot of the time and that's why she feels like she can escape into this whole other world of television.”
United States of Al, Utopia, Logan Lucky
Charlie Evans
Archie Sandford is Amanda and Clay’s teenage son. He prefers to keep to himself and remain in his bubble of video games, often seen with his headphones on. When they all lose signal, Archie can’t help obsessing over how to stay connected to the world through his phone.
“I think that Archie doesn’t know how to relate. He’s got his headphones on, he’s playing his video games, he’s on his phone — that’s how he knows how to exist,” Esmail said of the character. Though the character of Archie was originally written as more of a jock, Esmail said that after watching actor Charlie Evans’ audition tape, something else clicked for him. “Charlie played Archie as a smart-aleck type of guy who kind of talks from a place of know-it-all superiority versus being a run-of-the-mill callow brute,” he said. “What struck me the most is how different his Archie was from what I imagined — and how much better it was for it.”
Evans and Esmail bonded over their shared love of movies. “I love thrillers and psychological thrillers. Movies like 2001 and all of Hitchcock’s films, and I know those are both massive inspirations for Sam,” Evans said. “I know he was really inspired by that in his youth, and he carries that through a lot of his stuff. He has this encyclopedic knowledge about films in this genre.”
The Park, Everything’s Gonna Be Okay
Kevin Bacon
Danny is a local builder who worked on G.H.’s house. He’s also a survivalist who’s better equipped than the Sandfords to deal with a potential crisis.
Bacon is known for his iconiccharacter roles in many films, from Footloose to Hollow Man. So he and Esmail worked hard to anchor Danny into this story about survival and family. “Kevin turned what could have been a clichéd stereotype of a gun-toting conspiracy theorist into a staunch family man who wanted to protect his loved ones at any cost,” Esmail said. “It’s always a daunting task when you’re playing with archetypes, but Kevin knew exactly how far to push and pull back, making Danny come to life with much more dimensionality than I could have ever written on the page.”
Footloose, City on a Hill, They/Them, The Woodsman, Mystic River, Hollow Man, Tremors, Apollo 13
Listen to every song in the Leave the World Behind soundtrack
Esmail made special effort to populate the Leave the World Behind soundtrack with songs that had not been oversaturated in media — in particular, a crucial sequence where two characters dance together.
“I'm a strong believer in trying to use music that hasn't been used in a lot of film and TV because I do think people make associations,” Esmail told Netflix. “When you pick a song like that, it's really going to end up being another character in the scene. I had to pick a song they could dance to, but one that wasn’t overused. ‘Too Close’ [by Next] just fit the bill. I just thought it was really funny and sweet at the same time. That scene goes from lighthearted and playful to sad and dark within a matter of a minute, so the song had to do a lot of heavy lifting.”
Here’s every song that appears in Leave the World Behind:
Joey Bada$$ “THE REV3NGE”
Kool & the Gang “Misled”
Blackstreet “Never Gonna Let You Go”
TV on the Radio “Winter”
Next “Too Close”
The Rembrandts “I’ll Be There for You - Theme from ‘Friends’”
Nirvana “Breed”
Eminem “White America”
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five “New York New York”
OutKast “Roses”
Pop Smoke “What You Know Bout Love”
Nazar, Shannen SP “Bunker”
Sufjan Stevens “America”
ESG “Dance”
ABBA “The Name Of the Game”
Red Axes “What Is In Your Head”
Beastie Boys “Shake Your Rump”
Diana Ross “Upside Down”
KPH “Welcome to the Party - Instrumental”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Maps”
LCD Soundsystem “All My Friends”
Beck “Lost Cause”
M83 “Kim & Jessie”
Nancy Sinatra, Lee Hazlewood “Summer Wine”
TNGHT “Higher Ground”
2Pac, Talent “Changes”
You can listen to a playlist from the film on Spotify:
When is the Leave the World Behind release date?
Leave the World Behind is now streaming on Netflix. Brace yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment