First Images from Robert Zemeckis’ New Movie ‘Here’

Robin Wright and Tom Hanks star in 'Here'.

Preview:

The first look at Robert Zemeckis’ new movie, ‘Here’ is online.
Tom Hanks and Robin Wright star in the time-spanning drama.
It’s another experimental project for the ‘Forrest Gump’ team.

The filmmaking team behind ‘Forrest Gump’ certainly know a thing or three about a story that spans a large amount of time, and one that required considerable effect advances to support its main character’s encounters with historical figures.

So, as you might presume, their reunion –– and in this case, we mean specifically ‘Gump’ director Robert Zemeckis, stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright and screenwriter Eric Roth –– also offers an expansive chronological storyline and some experimental techniques.

The first look at the result, ‘Here’, is now online via Vanity Fair.

Not Yet RatedNov 15th, 2024

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An odyssey through time and memory, centered around a place in New England where—from wilderness, and then, later, from a home—love, loss, struggle, hope and… Read the Plot

What’s the story of ‘Here’?

Tom Hanks and Robin Wright star in 'Here'.

‘Here’ finds scriptwriter Roth adapting Richard McGuire’s much-loved graphic novel title.

First published as a six-page comic strip in 1989, before being turned into a full graphic novel decades later, ‘Here’ is a high-concept story that focuses on one single room, telling the interconnected, overlapping stories of the many people who’ve inhabited that room over thousands of years.

The film will feature a locked-down camera that never moves, with the action all occurring in one space, and, like the source material, overlapping panels representing changes in design for scene/time zone transitions.

Hanks stars as baby boomer Richard, who grows up in the same house he ends up raising his own family in during the 1970s and 1980s, with Wright as his wife, Margaret.

Zemeckis and his effects team are using a mixture of traditional make-up and cutting-edge digital techniques to portray the characters at different ages, and the story expands out further either way through time, showing Richard’s parents (played by Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly), occupants of the house long before them and even people –– and creatures –– living in the space before the place was built. There will also be a segment set in 2020, following the couple who inhabit the house after Richard and Margaret.

And though it features the very top end of de-aging effects, Zemeckis soon realized one way to make them work beyond what other filmmakers have tried:

“It only works because the performances are so good. Both Tom and Robin understood instantly that, ‘Okay, we have to go back and channel what we were like 50 years ago or 40 years ago, and we have to bring that energy, that kind of posture, and even raise our voices higher. That kind of thing.”

The aim, according to the director, is to show characters with whom the audience can connect.

Robert Zemeckis, Tom Hanks and Robin Wright on the set of 'Here'.

Here’s what Zemeckis says about that concept:

The whole point was to make the story identifiable. We didn’t want people [in the house] to be criminals or spies in highly dramatic situations. There are some people who probably won’t like the fact that the conflicts in the movie are not over the top—that they’re pretty rooted in reality.”

Who else is in ‘Here’?

The cast also includes Michelle Dockery, David Fynn, Ophelia Lovibond, Nicholas Pinnock, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Anya Marco Harris.

When will ‘Here’ be in theaters?

Sony aims to have ‘Here’ in theaters on November 15th. So if you’re itching to see what Team ‘Gump’ have been up to, you only have a few months to wait now.