Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie were both looking for some magic.Each of them had recently made the biggest projects of their careers. Robbie’s was B
Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie were both looking for some magic.
Each of them had recently made the biggest projects of their careers. Robbie’s was Barbie, the $1.4 billion blockbuster hit that earned eight Oscar nominations. Farrell’s was The Penguin, the gritty HBO series in which he transformed (with about three hours a day of prosthetics and makeup) into Gotham City’s infamous villain.
They followed up those two iconic characters with A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, an original romance about two strangers taken on an unexpected journey. “Going from The Penguin to this was quite simply stepping from the darkness into the light,” Farrell tells Vanity Fair. “As amazing as it was to work on The Penguin, that story was all about trauma and its various articulations and calcifications. This film is all about letting go of trauma—moving past it.”
Though Robbie had produced other projects in the interim, she hadn’t stepped in front of a camera since making Barbie in 2022. “I think that’s the longest break I’ve ever had between jobs. I thought it would be more scary to be walking onto the Big Bold set on day one, but it wasn’t,” she says. “Everything about this film was immediately comfortable.”
Matt Kennedy/Sony Pictures.
That comfort came from the story—and from director Kogonada, who was also looking to go on a substantial journey with his next movie. After two critically acclaimed projects—2017’s Columbus and 2021’s After Yang—and a few years of TV work, he was ready to take on a different sort of project. “I was looking for something a little bit larger and lighter,” he says. “I’m a big fan of comedy and romance, but I wanted it in a kind of original context.”
Then Seth Reiss’s script for A Big Bold Beautiful Journey landed on his desk. It was a sweeping and emotional tale following Sarah and David, who, after connecting at a wedding, are cosmicly brought together and shown doorways to their memories. (Watch the trailer below). “This film is really about reckoning with your past in order to find the possibility of love in the present,” says Kogonada. “What do you have to reckon with in order to truly connect with other people? And I think as you get older, you realize your past has everything to do with how you understand love in the present.”
Sony will release A Big Bold Beautiful Journey in theaters on September 19. With a supporting cast that includes Lily Rabe, Kevin Kline, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, the film aims to take audiences on an emotional ride—just as it did its two lead actors. “If audiences feel even a tiny slice of how magical it felt making this movie, then they’ll have the most incredible experience in the theater,” says Robbie. “Making this movie was truly one of the most magical experiences of my life.”
Reiss’s script reminded Kogonada of romantic dramedies from the likes of Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, The Apartment) and Ernst Lubitsch (Heaven Can Wait). “We’re always longing for connection and understanding,” he says. “It’s always something as human beings that we are searching for.”
His earlier films had centered on that longing for connection in different ways. In his meditative directorial debut, 2017’s Columbus, two strangers (John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson) wander around that city’s architectural marvels while sharing truths about their lives and their relationships to their parents. His follow-up, the 2021 film After Yang, starred Farell and Jodie Turner-Smith as parents whose android son malfunctions. While futuristic in nature, the film grapples with convoluted ideas about family, grief, and loss. It was another critical hit and won an award at the Sundance Film Festival.
He’s a soulful filmmaker who is known for his visual style, capturing a world that feels both familiar and completely unique. And while A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a more extensive canvas than his first films, it’s centered on the same deeply relatable desire for connection.
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