Academy Award®-winning director Damien Chazelle and Paramount Pictures presented their latest film, Babylon, on Monday at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The film was presented in an advanced screening to an audience of industry professionals, including Oscar voters and SAG members, followed by a Q&A session with the director and cast.
Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Diego Calva star in this original epic, and they are joined by a talented cast that includes Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, P.J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Olivia Hamilton, Tobey Maguire, Max Minghella, Rory Scovel, Katherine Waterston, Flea, Jeff Garlin, Eric Roberts, Ethan Suplee, Samara Weaving, and Olivia Wilde.
According to the official synopsis, Babylon is a tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess in 1920s Hollywood. The film follows the rise and fall of multiple characters in an era of unbridled decadence and depravity.
At the Q&A session, Chazelle described where his inspiration for the film came from. He talked about being a fan of film history for some time especially the early pre-history of Hollywood, the American film industry, and Los Angeles as a city.
He also gave insight into the era this film reflects, “I remember reading about this weird phenomenon towards the end of the ’20s. There was this rash of suicides, deaths that could have been suicidal, drug overdoses, a little bit coalescing with the drug epidemic going on at the time, and then digging into the fact that it sort of coincided with a kind of transition I saw depicted in Singin’ in the Rain and whatnot,” per Deadline.
Chazelle wrote and directed Babylon, Michael Beugg, Tobey Maguire, Wyck Godfrey, Helen Estabrook, and Adam Siegel executive-produced it, while Marc Platt, Matthew Plouffe, and Olivia Hamilton produced it.
Babylon opens in theaters on December 23.
