Tony Gilroy ends his 14-year gap behind the camera with a love letter to film composers

Tony Gilroy, the writer-director behind "Michael Clayton" and the creator of "Andor," returned to feature directing after a 14-year absence on October 2, when his new film "Behemoth!" had its world premiere at Alice Tully Hall as the Centerpiece selection of the 64th New York Film Festival. It is Gilroy's first film since 2012's "The Bourne Legacy."

The drama stars Pedro Pascal as Alex Serian, a touring cellist who returns to Los Angeles after 20 years on the road and goes to work as a session musician scoring Hollywood films. The ensemble includes Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Alexa Swinton, Kaya Ralls, Erik Griffin, JoBeth Williams and Margarita Levieva, with Hank Azaria and Will Arnett. Gilroy wrote and directed the film; his brother John Gilroy edited it and produced alongside Sanne Wohlenberg.

The film follows Alex Serian, a former child prodigy who left an orchestra position in Chicago after a soured relationship and returned to Los Angeles to work as a session musician scoring Hollywood films while sorting out unfinished family business — a premise Gilroy has described as his first attempt at writing a character defined more by what happens to him than by what he decides to do.

A composer "collective" instead of one score

Rather than hire a single composer, Gilroy built what he calls the Behemoth Collective: nine working film composers who contributed to the score, including Oscar winner Michael Giacchino and Oscar nominees James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri, alongside Michael Abels, Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Henry Jackman, Nami Melumad and Brandon Roberts. "James was my ambassador," Gilroy said of Howard at the festival's press conference. "He came on, and my goal was to get two composers before the agents figured out what I was doing."

The production was announced in March 2025 with Oscar Isaac originally attached to star; Pascal replaced him by that August. David Harbour had also been cast but exited in January 2026 to rest ahead of the final season of "Stranger Things." Principal photography ran from October 27, 2025, to January 23, 2026, in Los Angeles. Searchlight Pictures, which is distributing the film, will release it theatrically on December 4; it is also booked for the Montclair Film Festival on October 25 and the Tokyo International Film Festival later this month.

Pascal's cello training and Gilroy's approach to the role

Pascal trained on cello for several months ahead of shooting. "The cello was the main character of my life for the seven weeks leading up to shooting," he said at the NYFF press conference, as Deadline reported from the event. "I took it with me everywhere, that was Tony's advice." He described the process bluntly: "It was hell and heaven; it was incredible to be in lessons again with another artist, and to stimulate the physical challenge of it. You're supposed to spend a year learning how to really hold the bow correctly and I had a week. I never caught up to it, which was the ecstasy of it — it was the hardest thing I've ever done creatively."

Gilroy said he had never written a character quite like Alex before, describing him as a "passenger" in his own life who is nonetheless never passive — comparing the approach to Marcello Mastroianni's screen presence. "That's the trick to this," Gilroy said, "to put him on the train and not have him run over by it." Pascal, for his part, said reading the script "felt like a puzzle that I was asked to put together," and told Gilroy afterward: "You have created this complex Jason Bourne-like puzzle over something that is so intimate and so healing."

Reaction from the festival and early reviews

NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim, introducing the Centerpiece slot, framed the premiere as a long-anticipated comeback for Gilroy.

"We are delighted to present the world premiere of Tony Gilroy's anticipated return to the big screen as this year's NYFF Centerpiece. There is so much to savor in this immaculately crafted film, from its creative use of music to its note-perfect ensemble cast. Holding it all together is a tour de force by Pedro Pascal, one of the performances of the year from one of our true movie stars."

Early trade reviews were largely positive. Deadline's review, headlined "Pedro Pascal Hits All The Right Notes In Tony Gilroy's Lyrical Love Letter To The Music Of The Movies," praised Pascal's "low-key" performance, calling him "utterly convincing" as a working musician with "no showboating." IndieWire graded the film a B, describing it as "a floaty little character study" and "a movingly atonal character study about how people conduct themselves," while crediting the score and ensemble work. Gilroy himself called the Centerpiece slot the fulfillment of a long-held ambition: "I have been orbiting NYFF for the great majority of my life," he said. "The Centerpiece invitation is a fantasy I've conjured more times than I care to admit."

The premiere also arrives at a moment when NYFF's Centerpiece slot, traditionally reserved for awards-friendly studio dramas, has become a reliable early marker for the specialty box office: recent Centerpiece selections have gone on to multiple Oscar nominations. A specialty release carrying a single marquee studio star and an unconventional, publicity-friendly hook like the nine-composer score is the kind of title distributors use to anchor a fall awards push, well before a wide release date tests whether that attention converts into ticket sales.

What happens next

With a December 4 theatrical date from Searchlight — a studio with a track record of steering specialty-sized dramas into the best picture race — "Behemoth!" now enters the fall festival circuit as a likely awards-season talking point, both for Pascal's performance and for the unconventional nine-composer scoring credit, which will raise eligibility and categorization questions for guilds and the film-music branch of the Academy as voting season approaches. The film's remaining festival stops, at the Montclair Film Festival later this month and in Tokyo, will be the next public tests of audience reaction ahead of its wide release. Reporters at the festival's press conference noted the unusually warm reception for a filmmaker returning after such a long gap.