The challenge of memory is at the center of the first trailer for the upcoming film adaptation by Amazon MGM Studios Nickel Boys.
Director RaMell Ross’s film will hit theaters in limited release on October 25, before streaming on Prime Video at a later date. Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor star in the adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name.
Nickel Boys tells the story of the friendship between two young men sent to a segregated reform school in Florida in the 1960s.
“I don’t know what else you want me to remember,” actor Sam Malone’s character says during a tense reunion in the trailer.
Ross directed the film from a screenplay he wrote with Maya Krinsky, based on Whitehead’s book. Joslyn Barnes, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and David Levine produced, with Brad Pitt serving as executive producer.
Nickel Boys premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last month and will open the New York Film Festival on September 27.
In his review for The Hollywood Reportercritic Lovia Gyarkye wrote that Ross “makes Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel his own, a deft and moving tale of two boys in a punishing Florida reform school. Here, the artist returns to and expands on some familiar themes: black boyhood and masculinity, the anchoring force of community, and, of course, the landscape and its secrets.”
Ross's 2018 film, Hale County This Morning, Tonightwas nominated for an Oscar for best documentary.