George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson Channel Old Hollywood in Hail Caesar! Trailer

Posted on October 9, 2015

George Clooney, Scarlett Johansson and Josh Brolin star in the first trailer for the Coen brothers' new comedy Hail, Caesar!. The film is set in the Golden Age of Hollywood and is a send up of the huge personalities of the time and the scandals they kept hidden from the press.

Josh Brolin plays a real person: Eddie Mannix. He was a film studio executive and producer, but his most important job as as the main fixer for MGM from the 1920s though the 1940s. The stars of the time had to maintain a perfect reputation or the public would shun their films. Mannix covered up every kind of scandal imaginable, from the murder of Jean Harlow's husband to Judy Garland's drug addiction. He hid single Loretta Young's pregnancy (she had an affair with a married Clark Gable) and arranged for her to "adopt" her own child. These scandals were kept out of the newspapers and many of the stars were kept out of jail, all to make sure the studio kept raking in profits.

In the film Clooney plays a Baird Whitlock, a mega star who is the lead in an expensive, epic historical film about Julius Caesar. His character seems like a cross between Charlton Heston, Victor Mature and Richard Burton. He's handsome and the public loves him, but he has a lot of scandals to cover up. When Baird is kidnapped from the set, Mannix must find Baird and cover up everything before anyone finds out he's missing.

Tilda Swinton plays gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, Scarlett Johansson is channeling Esther Williams, Channing Tatum appears to be playing Gene Kelly, and Alden Ehrenreich looks a lot like Montgomery Clift. Frances McDormand looks like a film editor and Jonah Hill is a private detective. The trailer is very funny: with this cast we don't know why they are burying the film with a February, 2016 release. Take a look: