Asteroid City

Asteroid City (styled as "Asteroid City") is a 2023 American science fiction comedy drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson, from a story he wrote with Roman Coppola. It features an ensemble cast, including Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Steve Park, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Matt Dillon, Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Tony Revolori, Jake Ryan, and Jeff Goldblum. Its plot mostly follows a play about a Junior Stargazer convention in a retrofuturistic version of 1955, but it becomes metatextual because the making of the play is the subject of a television documentary. The story is about extraterrestrials and UFOs witnessed in the American Southwestern desert in close proximity to atomic test sites after World War II.
The project was announced in September 2020 as an untitled romance film, with Anderson writing, producing and directing, alongside Jeremy Dawson of American Empirical Pictures and Steven Rales of Indian Paintbrush. In February 2021, it was described as being about a "group of brainy teenagers". Originally set for Rome, filming took place in Chinchón, Spain, between August and October, 2021, with cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman. Several sets resembling a desert landscape and a mock train station were used. Post-production included editor Barney Pilling and a musical score composed by frequent Anderson composer Alexandre Desplat, featuring country and western songs from many artists. The official title for Asteroid City was revealed in October 2021 at the BFI London Film Festival.
Asteroid City premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 23, 2023, where it competed for the Palme d'Or. It began a limited theatrical release through Focus Features in the United States on June 16, 2023, expanding to a wide release a week later. It grossed $54 million worldwide on a $25 million budget, and received generally positive reviews.
In a retro-futuristic version of the 1950s, a television host introduces a documentary about the creation and production of Asteroid City, a play by the famed playwright Conrad Earp. The play's events are depicted in widescreen and stylized color, while the television special is seen in black-and-white Academy ratio.
In the play, a youth astronomy convention is held in the fictional desert town of Asteroid City. War photojournalist Augie Steenbeck arrives early to the Junior Stargazer convention with Woodrow, his intellectual teenage son, and his three younger daughters. When their car breaks down, Augie phones his father-in-law, Stanley, asking for his help. Stanley, who dislikes his son-in-law, persuades him to tell the children about their mother's recent death, which Augie had concealed. Augie and Woodrow meet Midge Campbell, a famous but world-weary actress, and her daughter Dinah, who, like Woodrow, will be honored at the convention. Augie and Midge, and Woodrow and Dinah, gradually fall in love throughout the play. The other convention participants arrive:
A local motel provides everyone's accommodations.
Gibson welcomes the attendees at the Asteroid City crater where the teenagers are to receive awards for various inventions. A UFO suddenly appears above the crater; an alien emerges and steals the remnant of the meteorite that created the crater. Augie manages to photograph the creature. Gibson, with instructions from the president, places the town under military quarantine, and everyone is subjected to medical and psychiatric examinations. Meanwhile, a romance blossoms between Montana and June, who assure the students that the alien is likely peaceful. The Stargazer honorees use Dr. Hickenlooper's equipment to attempt to contact the alien. Tricking the guard watching the pay phone, Ricky calls his school newspaper to relay the quarantine details and cover-up to the outside world.
The Asteroid City events become national news. A furious Gibson is about to be forced to end the quarantine when the UFO reappears, dropping the meteorite back into its former position; the General sees new markings on it and deduces that it has been "inventoried." Gibson then reinstates the quarantine; the children, scientists, and parents revolt, using the honorees' inventions to overpower the military. In the play's epilogue, Augie and his family are the last to leave Asteroid City after Gibson officially lifts the quarantine. Woodrow reveals he has won the fellowship funding, and Midge leaves Augie her mailing address. Augie and his family quietly drive away.
Throughout the film, the play's creation is interspersed with the play itself in the television documentary. Some time after Conrad Earp started writing, he meets with actor Jones Hall, who performs an audition in Earp's home and is immediately cast. During the same interaction, Earp and Hall kiss, establishing their relationship as lovers. Earp writes the play with help from a local acting school and recruits most cast members from it, including Mercedes Ford, a temperamental yet talented actress who plays Midge.
During the recorded performance of the play, Hall, who plays Augie, confronts the play's director Schubert Green, saying he "still doesn't understand the play", and asks Green if he is "doing him right". Green tells Hall to keep playing Augie the same way despite being uncertain, and that he is doing him right. After that interaction, while taking a smoke break on a balcony, Hall runs into the actress who was cast to play Augie's wife before her only scene was cut. She recites the deleted scene's text to him, and he appears to gain new insight from it.
Six months into the play's run, Conrad Earp dies in an automobile accident.
In September 2020, it was reported Wes Anderson would write and direct a romance film, which he would produce with Jeremy Dawson of American Empirical Pictures and Steven Rales of Indian Paintbrush. By February 2021, Michael Cera and Jeff Goldblum entered negotiations to star; the film was then described as being about a "group of brainy teenagers". Tilda Swinton was the first person to officially join the cast, in June 2021. In May 2023, Anderson talked about how the COVID-19 pandemic inspired the film and its story, saying: "I don't think there would be a quarantine in the story if we weren't experiencing it. It wasn't deliberate...Writing is the most improvisational part of the whole process. It relies on having nothing."
Bill Murray was originally cast as the motel manager, but had to drop out of the role due to being infected with COVID-19, leading to Carrell playing the part instead. However, after his recovery, he arrived at the film set in Spain, and while Anderson could not add another role to the film, he gave Murray the role of Tab Whitney, the actor playing Jock Larkings, business titan of the company bearing his name, which was an additional character created for a short promotional film trailer.
Principal photography, originally planned for Rome, took place in Spain between August and October 2021, with COVID-19 safety precautions in place. Several sets were built in Chinchón, including a vast diorama resembling a desert landscape with the eponymous town of Asteroid City, including its train station, a diner, a garage and an observatory. Cast member Fisher Stevens said the film would include "the wildest cast since The Bridge on the River Kwai" and that the cast and crew "were all bubbled together in a hotel, which was an old monastery".
Scarlett Johansson was paid $4,131 a week for her two months of work.
The film's title was revealed by Bill Murray to be Asteroid City at the BFI London Film Festival in October 2021. Alexandre Desplat composed the score, his sixth collaboration with Anderson. Costume design was by multiple Academy Award winner Milena Canonero. In July 2022, it was announced that Focus Features would distribute the film, reuniting them with Anderson after Moonrise Kingdom (2012). It was also revealed that Murray would not be in the film as initially reported, as a result of contracting COVID-19 before he could shoot his scenes, leading to him being replaced by Steve Carell for the role of the motel manager.
A teaser poster for Asteroid City was released on March 28, 2023. The first trailer was released the following day, which featured a rendition of Johnny Duncan's 1957 song "Last Train to San Fernando". Jazz Monroe of Pitchfork called the trailer "extremely Andersonian", while Charles Pulliam-Moore of The Verge wrote that the film "looks and feels exactly how you'd think a Wes Anderson coming-of-age movie about stargazing in the desert would".
Asteroid City premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 23, 2023. It was given a limited theatrical release in New York City and Los Angeles in the United States on June 16, 2023, expanding to a wide release on June 23, 2023. It had an earlier premiere in Sweden and a limited number of other countries on June 9, 2023.
Asteroid City was released digitally on July 11, 2023, two and a half weeks after its theatrical premiere. A DVD and Blu-ray were released on August 15, 2023. It began streaming on Peacock on August 11, 2023. It is available on Prime Video with the default subscription.
In the United States, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) initially gave the film an R-rating "for brief graphic nudity". Focus Features successfully appealed the decision, and the film was re-rated PG-13 "for brief graphic nudity, smoking, and some suggestive material".
Asteroid City grossed $28.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $25.8 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross of $54 million.
In its limited opening weekend, it made $853,382 from six theaters, finishing in tenth. Its per-venue average of $142,230 was the best total since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the largest since La La Land in 2016. Expanding to 1,675 theaters in its second weekend, it was projected to gross $7–8 million. It made $3.8 million on its first day of wide release, including $1.1 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to make $9 million, finishing sixth. It also had the highest opening for a Wes Anderson film in wide release. Asteroid City completed its theatrical run in the United States and Canada on September 7, 2023.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 75% of 356 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The website's consensus reads: "Asteroid City is unlikely to win Wes Anderson many new converts, but those who respond to his signature style will find this a return to immaculately arranged form." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, based on 60 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 78% of filmgoers gave it a positive score, with 51% saying they would definitely recommend it.
In The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw called Asteroid City "terrifically entertaining and lightly sophisticated", and wrote: "The movie rattles cleverly and exhilaratingly along, adroitly absorbing the implications of pathos and loneliness without allowing itself to slow down. It is tempting to consider this savant blankness as some kind of symptom, but I really don't think so: it is the expression of style. And what style it is". John Nugent of Empire commended the film's unique visual and narrative style, writing: "[Anderson] remains cinema's most astonishing stylist, the rigour and detail in every frame never better", but warned: "It is occasionally a bit unfocused, and always a bit indulgent. If you don't like The Wes Anderson Film, you won't like this. But we others must hope he keeps making it."
In his review for Vulture, Bilge Ebiri wrote: "To the casual observer, Wes Anderson might seem like someone who either refuses to read his own press or has bought into his press to an absurd degree", alluding to criticism of Anderson's filmmaking style, but later argued: "There's a point to all this indulgence. Anderson's obsessively constructed dioramas explore the very human need to organize, quantify, and control our lives in the face of the unexpected and the uncertain [...] Asteroid City might be the purest expression of this dynamic because it's about the unknown in all its forms."
In his review for The New Yorker, Anthony Lane highlighted Johansson's performance as what "cracks the movie's ordered surface", and wrote: "Even if you regard the latest movie as a box of tricks, you have to admire the nerve with which Johansson, as Midge, delves into that box and plucks out scraps of coolly agonized wit. More deftly than anyone else, she traffics in the to-and-fro between the real and the imagined". Adam Mullins-Khatib of the Chicago Reader hailed the film as "a true achievement from one of America's most unique cinematic voices", complimenting Anderson's direction and screenplay, as well as the cast's performances.
Filmmakers Robert Eggers, Carlos López Estrada, Chad Hartigan and James Ponsoldt all cited Asteroid City as among their favorite films of 2023.
More critical reviews of Asteroid City came from those who cited its pacing and story. Writing for the BBC, Nicholas Barber said "at no point does [Anderson] allow us to settle into any narrative in particular". Owen Gleiberman of Variety found the film similar to the "fussy, top-heavy, narratively batty yet stretched-thin concoctions" he saw in The Darjeeling Limited and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and concluded: "...[the] extraterrestrial visit results in Asteroid City being placed under quarantine, which means that everyone who has come to town is trapped there. The audience will know just how that feels. 'Asteroid City' looks smashing, but as a movie it's for Anderson die-hards only, and maybe not even too many of them." In a year-end article, Gleiberman would label Asteroid City one of the worst movies of 2023.
Mary Cox of the Alton Telegraph criticized the script and plot, commenting, "The script was mind-numbing. I saw several people nod off because they were bored." Time's Stephanie Zacharek said, "Wes Anderson's Asteroid City is what happens when a filmmaker's world of wonder and whimsy becomes a prison."
The film appeared on multiple critics' lists of the best films of 2023, including: