Life on Two Wheels: Focus Features and Netflix Drop Trailers Featuring Biker Gangs in Two Very Different Eras
There have always been biker gangs. There will always be biker gangs.
Perhaps not, but two movie trailers that dropped Tuesday, one set in the freewheeling 1960s and one in a dystopian London in the near future, feature enigmatic bikers as their protagonists.
In The Bikeriders, Austin Butler ditches his Elvis imitation and Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer each take a stab at an American accent to play bikers in a Midwestern motorcycle club in the mid-60s.
The synopsis for the movie says “Kathy (Comer), a strong-willed member of the Vandals who’s married to a wild, reckless bikerider named Benny (Butler), recounts the Vandals’ evolution over the course of a decade, beginning as a local club of outsiders united by good times, rumbling bikes, and respect for their strong, steady leader Johnny (Hardy).”
The film is inspired by Danny Lyons’ iconic book of photography from the period. Jeff Nichols wrote the screenplay and directed the film, which also stars Norman Reedus, Michael Shannon, Boyd Holbrook, Mike Faist, Damon Herriman, Beau Knapp, Emory Cohen, Karl Glusman, Toby Wallace, and Happy Anderson.
Originally scheduled to be released by Disney’s 20th Century Studios but taken off their roster, the movie was picked up for distribution by Focus Features.
The Bikeriders will invade theaters on June 21st, 2024.
Fast-forwarding to the impending/unfolding dystopia, we arrive in London in a place called The Kitchen, which houses a community of working-class (but still poor) people who refuse to leave the place they call home. Here we meet “Izi (Kane Robinson), living here by necessity and desperately trying to find a way out, and a 12-year-old Benji (Jedediah Bannerman), who has lost his mother and is searching for a family. We follow our unlikely pair as they struggle to forge a relationship in a system that is stacked against them.”
The trailer establishes the gray-tinged slums, and forces pitting the residents of the Kitchen against the brutality of London’s police state, with a gang of rebel motorcycle riders fighting against police overreach.
The film was directed by Kibwe Tavares and Get Out‘s Daniel Kaluuya, who also serves as co-writer and co-producer. Kaluuya wrote the screenplay with Joe Murtagh and Daniel Emmerson is also producing. The rest of the cast includes Hope Ikpoku Jnr, Ian Wright, BackRoad Gee, Cristale, Teija Kabs, and Demmy Ladipo.
The Kitchen, which premiered at the 67th BFI London Film Festival in October debuts on Netflix on January 19th, 2024.