Clint Eastwood has hit a bit of a rough patch in his directing career. Since getting his last Oscar nomination in 2007, his work has ranged from the underwhelming (Changeling, Gran Torino, Invictus) to downright bad (Hereafter, J. Edgar). Given the the star's status as a Hollywood icon, one truly hopes that he can turn things around before he is ready to retire, and today we get our first look at his latest effort. Apple has debuted the premiere trailer for Eastwood's upcoming musical Jersey Boys, and you can watch it embedded above.
Based on the true story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons and starring John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Michael Lomenda, Vincent Piazza, and Christopher Walken, Jersey Boys is an adaptation of the Broadway play of the same name. The story begins in 1960s New Jersey and follows the various members of the rock group as they came together to create iconic music that is still played around the globe today. John Logan (Skyfall) developed the screenplay along with Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, who also wrote the musical book.
What makes me curious about this film is how Eastwood's directing style will mesh with his first venture into the musical genre. Eastwood is notorious for working extremely fast, rarely doing more than a couple of takes on a particular shot, and that may have presented a challenge when working with actual musical numbers. As this trailer demonstrates, he is also delving into new narrative areas as well, with characters breaking the fourth wall and talking about the way they see certain events. Jersey Boys isn't really the kind of movie we'd expect the filmmaker to make, but he could wind up really surprising us all.
Jersey Boys is scheduled to land in theaters on June 20th, and will hopefully fare a little bit better than the last time we saw a big musical released during the summer blockbuster season. Until then, you can hum along with some great Four Seasons tracks below (after watching that trailer, you know you want to):
