Matt Damon and Kristen Wiig get small in the first teaser for Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing,” setting up a full trailer for the movie in a couple of weeks, and tied to the movie’s premiere as the Venice Film Festival opener today. The film follows Damon and Wiig’s married couple as they embark on a radical procedure to literally shrink themselves. The synopsis, like the characters is rather tiny.
When scientists discover how to shrink humans to five inches tall as a solution to over-population, Paul (Matt Damon) and his wife Audrey (Kristen Wiig) decide to abandon their stressed lives in order to get small and move to a new downsized community — a choice that triggers life-changing adventures.
This film is definitely new territory for Payne who has specialized in small character-based films his entire career including “Election,” “About Schmidt,” and “Sideways,” so it’ll be interesting to see how he deals with such a sci-fi based premise. Payne, though, has never really made a bad movie and when they screened 10 minutes of the film at CinemaCon, everyone seemed to respond positively to it and we named it one of our most anticipated films of the year.
“Downsizing” is directed by Alexander Payne and written by Payne and his regular co-collaborator Jim Taylor. In addition to Damon and Wiig, the film co-stars Jason Sudeikis, Christoph Waltz, and Hong Chau. The film has the awards friendly release date of December 22, 2017, so it’ll be interesting to see if Payne can keep up his Best Picture nomination streak, as his two previous films “The Descendants” and “Nebraska” were nominated, and buzz from this morning’s Venice screening certainly seems to suggest so — check back any minute now for Jess’s review from the Lido. In the meantime, tell us what you think of the trailer and put your comments in below.