By John Corrado

Sony Pictures has just put out the first trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing. This is the director’s followup to his Oscar-winning The Whale, and it looks much lighter in tone than that film, or really any of Aronofsky’s previous works (Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Black Swan, etc.). The tone for this one seems to be veering towards dark action comedy.

Set in the 1990s, Austin Butler (who incidentally lost the Oscar for Elvis to Brendan Fraser for The Whale) stars as a former high school basketball star who gets inadvertently caught up in the gritty New York City underworld. Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith and Liev Schreiber also star, among others. It’s based on a novel by Charlie Huston that has been in development for years.

The film opens in theatres on August 29th, not necessarily a prime release date. But the fact this is opening at the end of summer (before any of the fall fests), suggests they aren’t going for an awards play. But I’ve always been a fan of Aronofsky’s work in the past, so I’ll reserve judgement until I see this one. The full trailer is below.