‘Behemoth’, the new Tony Gilroy drama starring Pedro Pascal as a cellist, landed its first trailer on Tuesday, 14 July 2026, and confirmed a cinema release date for later this year.
Searchlight Pictures will release the film on Friday, 4 December 2026, placing it squarely in the awards season window, as reported by Deadline.
It marks Gilroy’s first feature as director since The Bourne Legacy in 2012.
What the ‘Behemoth’ trailer reveals
Pascal plays Alex Serian, a gifted cellist who returns home to Los Angeles after 20 years on the road. The teaser leans into the music itself, following Serian as playing carries him into an adventure that reshapes his life.
Details beyond the premise are being kept tight, in keeping with a project that was developed largely in secret. What the trailer makes clear is the tone: intimate, character-driven and built around a single performance rather than spectacle.
The cast around him is stacked, with Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Will Arnett, Hank Azaria, JoBeth Williams and Margarita Levieva all featured. Gilroy spent the years since his last film building the acclaimed Star Wars series Andor.
The score is its own event. Nine composers contributed, among them Michael Giacchino, James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri, a lineup that signals just how central music is to the whole project.
Pascal has said the material pulled him in on more than one level.
“There was something overall about this story that I think I connected to more cerebrally and emotionally,” he said of why he took the role.
Pedro Pascal on learning the cello
Pascal has been open about how hard the instrument was to fake convincingly.
“Holding a bow correctly alone takes a day’s lesson, and that’s moving fast,” he said, describing it as tougher than any physical training he had taken on before.
He kept his sense of humour about the results. Asked how his playing compared to Yo-Yo Ma, Pascal joked that his sound ranks “below the earth,” before adding, “But I can make it look good.”
Gilroy admitted he had doubts about the casting at first. “I thought he was going to be somehow superficial or flighty,” the director said of Pascal.
“He’s just really, really smart about how to be a movie star.”
With the trailer now out and the date locked, Behemoth becomes one of the films to watch as awards season builds toward its December release.
Whether Searchlight’s big swing pays off will only become clear once audiences hear Pascal play.
