It's not an easy thing to make a great movie primarily featuring only one human character – but certainly one thing that will help any production of that nature is having a star like Tom Hanks playing that one human character. The two-time Oscar winner has regularly proven that he is one of the most captivating big screen presences of all time, and he doesn't really need any other actors around to demonstrate his spectacular talent. This was something that we first saw front-and-center over 20 years ago in Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away, but soon we will see him try and recreate that special magic starring in Miguel Sapochnik's Finch, and today we finally have our debut look at footage from the film courtesy of the trailer above.
Originally titled BIOS, Finch was filmed in 2019 and was initially planned as part of Universal Pictures' slate of 2020 big screen releases... but then the whole pandemic thing happened. The movie was pushed multiple times, but Apple TV+ – which got into the Tom Hanks game last year with the release of Aaron Schneider's Greyhound – picked up distribution rights back in May. Now it is set to debut on the streaming service in a couple of months, and it appears as though it has the potential to be a fun cinematic ride.
The film is based on an original screenplay by Craig Luck and Ivor Powell, and the titular Finch (Tom Hanks) is a scientist clinging to existence at the end of the world. A cataclysmic solar flare has decimated life on Earth, but he has managed to survive by being locked up in his bunker-like laboratory. His only companion is a dog named Goodyear, but as he comes to grips with his own mortality, he realizes that he doesn't want to leave his pet alone. In hopes of fixing this, he builds a robot named Jeff (Caleb Landry Jones) to be a companion to the canine, and all together they head out on a cross country road trip, facing all varieties of conflict and perils along the way.
Watching this trailer, I have to say I find myself wondering about the tone of Finch and how it is represented in this trailer. First learning about the movie, I won't say I expected that the film would be dour – it is a road movie about a man, a dog, and a robot, after all – but I certainly was expecting something more on the drama side of the scale given the post-apocalyptic setting and the expansive isolation. The use of Hans Zimmer's "You're So Cool" from the True Romance soundtrack in particular gives this footage a more upbeat feel, and I'll be curious to see how that it ultimately reflected when compared to the full movie.
We'll have the opportunity to make that comparison in just a few weeks, as Finch will be here incredibly soon. Set to be an Apple TV+ exclusive, the film will be available to stream on November 5. In the meantime, you can check out all of the titles that are still set to come out between now and the end of the year with our 2021 Movie Release Calendar.
