Damien Chazelle’s 1920s Hollywood film Babylon has been a tightly-held secret since first announced. But that changed today during Paramount’s presentation at CinemaCon, where the first footage of stars Brad Pitt as silent film actor John Gilbert and Margot Robbie as screen icon Clara Bow was shown. But not only that, we also learned that Tobey Maguire, fresh off his return to the Spidey suit in Spider-Man: No Way Home, is set to play Charlie Chaplin.
The film centers on Hollywood’s transition in the 1920s from silent movies to talkies, and not every actor was able to make that move smoothly. Variety, who saw the initial footage, says it looks like “a mix between Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
Yes, please.
Also in the cast are Max Minghella, Spike Jonze, Jean Smart, Flea, Samara Weaving, and Olivia Wilde.
Meanwhile, this might not be the last time we see Maguire in the Spidey suit. With Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness dropping next week, there has been a lot of speculation whether we’ll see him return to the Spider-Man franchise that he directed Maguire in for Sony from 2002-2007, concluding with Spider-Man 3. While a fourth film was put in development, it was canned in favor of starting over with Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man. But, as we all know, we got to see Maguire again in No Way Home. Surely that can’t be the end, right?
Well, turns out Raimi is very much into the idea. He said as much while speaking with Moviepilot…
“I didn’t think it was possible,” Raimi admitted. “But after jumping back in with the multiverse. I realized that anything is possible now so I’m completely open to it.”
Would Spidey fans be into a middle-aged Spider-Man movie? This middle-aged Marvel fan definitely would be.
