Ari Aster's Eddington — Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, and Austin Butler — Explores Tensions in Small Towns During Covid.

      Tensions surrounding Covid are escalating in the small New Mexico town featured in Eddington, the new film from writer-director Ari Aster, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, and Austin Butler.

      This film appears to be more straightforward compared to Aster's previous collaboration with Phoenix, the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Beau Is Afraid. However, being an Ari Aster project, expect unexpected dark twists.

      Premiering at Cannes and hitting theaters on July 18, the film bears the tagline “hindsight is 2020,” referencing the year the pandemic began, accompanied by an image of buffalo leaping from a cliff. Indigenous hunters historically drove plains buffalo to jump off cliffs in panic, mirroring the widespread panic that characterized much of 2020.

      The Eddington poster. A24

      The Eddington Trailer, From Ari Aster

      The trailer for Eddington adopts an Instagram scrolling format, making its overall focus apparent from the outset with a mention of “that lab in Wuhan, China.” We then see Phoenix, playing Sheriff of Sevilla County, New Mexico, noting that the residents of Eddington “like guns” — a clear warning for anyone thinking of taking them.

      Next, we see Butler’s preachy influencer addressing his followers, stating, “your pain is not a coincidence — you are not a coincidence.”

      We then shift to a sincere-looking Emma Stone character addressing her husband’s announcement from the previous day as the string music builds.

      There are brief references to Michael Jackson and conspiracy theories related to 9/11, alongside the reassuring presence of Pedro Pascal as Mayor Ted Garcia, who is determined to “keep Eddington safe.”

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      By the end of our scroll, we discover that Phoenix's sheriff has assaulted a protester in a town “shaken by murders.”

      As far as we know, Eddington is not a real town, nor is Sevilla County a real county. However, the film was shot last year in actual New Mexico locations around Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Truth or Consequences. When announced last year by the New Mexico Film Office, Eddington was described as following a “small-town New Mexico sheriff with bigger ambitions.”

      In addition to Phoenix, Pascal, Stone, and Butler, the cast includes Luke Grimes (Yellowstone), Deirdre O’Connell (The Requin), Micheal Ward (Top Boy), Clifton Collins Jr. (Jockey), William Belleau (Killers of the Flower Moon), Cameron Mann (Mare of Easttown), Matt Gomez Hidaka (Silo), and Amélie Hoeferle (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes).

      The large-scale production involved over 300 New Mexicans, including 230 crew members, 59 main actors, and 105 background performers.

      Ari Aster wrote, directed, and produced the film alongside Lars Knudsen under their Square Peg banner, while Academy Award nominee Darius Khondji served as the director of photography. Eddington marks Aster’s fourth collaboration with A24, which also distributed Aster’s Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023).

      Eddington is part of a Cannes lineup featuring other highly anticipated films such as The Phoenician Scheme by Wes Anderson, Alpha by Julia Ducournau, The History of Sound by Oliver Hermanus, New Wave by Richard Linklater, and The Mastermind by Kelly Reichardt. The festival is set to take place from May 13-24.

      This new film is scheduled to release a week before another major Pedro Pascal film, Marvel’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, which premieres on July 25 and features Pascal as the stretchy inventor Reed Richards. The trailer was released on Monday, a day after the Season 2 premiere of his HBO series The Last of Us. Clearly, he has a very busy 2025 ahead.

      Eddington will be released in theaters on July 18 by A24.