Edward Norton’s MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN Has A Trailer

Edward Norton is without a doubt one of our hardest working actors. So the past half-decade has felt pretty uneasy what with him appearing so sporadically on screen. Collateral Beauty was his last major live-action role, and before that, Birdman. Think about that. Internalize it. We’re all Norton deprived!

So it’s with plenty of fanfare that I give you the first trailer to Motherless Brooklyn, a film that Norton wrote, directed, produced, and starred in.

Dim the lights, please:

For fans of Norton or the Jonathan Lethem novel the film is based on, this trailer gives a lot to chew on. From Norton’s adaptational decision to set the novel in the 1950s instead of the novel’s contemporary ‘90s, to Norton’s interesting commitment in playing the main character’s Tourette syndrome. I, for one, am just stoked to see Edward Norton acting opposite an Edward Norton-directed Bruce Willis.

For the uninitiated, here’s a synopsis:

“Lionel Essrog (Edward Norton), a lonely private detective living with Tourette Syndrome, ventures to solve the murder of his mentor and only friend, Frank Minna (Bruce Willis). Armed only with a few clues and the engine of his obsessive mind, Lionel unravels closely guarded secrets that hold the fate of New York in the balance. In a mystery that carries him from gin-soaked jazz clubs in Harlem to the hard-edged slums of Brooklyn and, finally, into the gilded halls of New York's power brokers, Lionel contends with thugs, corruption and the most dangerous man in the city to honor his friend and save the woman who might be his own salvation.”

Motherless Brooklyn stars Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Alec Baldwin and Willem Dafoe. The film comes out in theaters November 1, 2019, after it premieres at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, and in the US at the New York Film Festival. I don’t know about the rest of you, but it’s already the movie I’m rooting most for this awards season.