The bigger the dream, the greater the fight, says the latest trailer for director Damien Chazelle’s upcoming epic period outing, Babylon. A-listers Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie lead a star-studded ensemble cast, with Babylon due to debut in theaters next month. Check out the newly released Babylon trailer below, courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

Set during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and detailing Hollywood’s transition from silent films to so-called “talkies,” Babylon tells a tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess as it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.

Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, who is best known for the likes of La La Land and Whiplash, and featuring the original music track “Voodoo Mama” from Academy Award-winning composer Justin Hurwitz, Babylon features an all-star cast led by Brad Pitt as über-movie star Jack Conrad; Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy, an aspiring actress who suddenly finds herself thrown into the spotlight; and Narcos: Mexico star Diego Calva as Manny Torres, a Mexican-American film assistant.

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The rest of the cast includes the likes of Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, Jean Smart, Lukas Haas, Max Minghella, Samara Weaving, Olivia Wilde, Spike Jonze, Katherine Waterston, and Tobey Maguire.

Though Babylon is a fictional tale set at the heart of Hollywood, the story will take inspiration from real-life, with Brad Pitt’s character taking inspiration from such Hollywood legends as John Gilbert, Clark Gable, and Douglas Fairbanks. Director Damien Chazelle has described the character of Jack Conrad as a man “reaching a point in his life in his career where he’s starting to look back and starting to wonder what’s ahead.” Margot Robbie’s character Nellie LaRoy will be built from similar foundations, taking inspiration from the likes of Clara Bow, Jeanne Eagels, Joan Crawford, and Alma Rubens. “Margot as a person has this—it’s a very Australian sort of thing—brash, bold, hungry kind of edge to her that she was really able to tap into and do a lot of really fun things with,” Chazelle said of his leading lady.

Early Reactions to Babylon Have Praised the Movie’s Grandiosity

     Paramount Pictures

Babylon was first screened for critics earlier this month, with many of the early reactions heaping praise on Chazelle’s epic vision and the movie’s sheer level of grandiosity. “Damien Chazelle’s Babylon is a dazzling, dizzying cacophony of demented depravity,” says Courtney Howard of Fresh Fiction. “A rebellious, outrageous portrait of golden-era hedonistic Hollywood.”

Meanwhile, Variety’s Jazz Tangcay calls Babylon “extravagant, decadent and all together delightfully delicious.” Critic Scott Mantz adds that “Damien Chazelle pulls out all the stops, works without a filter, and takes a mighty big swing on Babylon. It’s bold, audacious, wild filmmaking.”

Other reactions, however, have described Babylon as being a bit of a mess, unable to harness and tame its ambitious nature properly. “Babylon is A LOT of movie – a purposeful mess.,” says Yolanda Machado of Entertainment Weekly. “Babylon has some incredibly strong sequences but overall lacked focus and couldn’t support so many key characters,” adds Collider’s Perri Nemiroff.

Despite this, everyone seems to agree that Babylon is worth seeing for Margot Robbie’s performance. A performance that Variety’s Jazz Tangcay calls the Oscar nominee’s “best performance to date.”

Babylon is scheduled to be released in the United States on December 23, 2022, by Paramount Pictures.