Author Shelby Van Pelt’s best-selling novel Remarkably Bright Creatures has sold over two million copies and gone through 30 reprintings since its 2022 debut – and in exactly one month, we’re going to have the chance to watch a film adaptation of the story on the Netflix streaming service! The film version of Remarkably Bright Creatures is set to start streaming on May 8th, and today a new trailer has dropped online. You can watch it in the embed above.
Who stars in Remarkably Bright Creatures?
Olivia Newman (Where the Crawdads Sing) directs the film from a screenplay she wrote with John Whittington, and a strong cast was assembled to bring the story to life. We have:
- Sally Field (Smokey and the Bandit)
- Lewis Pullman (Thunderbolts*)
- Colm Meaney (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
- Joan Chen (The Last Emperor)
- Kathy Baker (Picket Fences)
- Beth Grant (Donnie Darko)
- Sofia Black D’Elia (Single Drunk Female)
- Alfred Molina (Spider-Man 2), providing the voice of an octopus named Marcellus
What is Remarkably Bright Creatures about?
The official synopsis reads,
A widow who works at a local aquarium finds joy again when she forms an unlikely bond with a Giant Pacific Octopus and a wayward young man who comes to town in search of family. Together, they will uncover a mystery that will lead them to a life-changing discovery and restore their sense of wonder. Based on the best-selling book.
The book’s author, Van Pelt, told Netflix that the concept of Marcellus the Octopus was inspired from a YouTube rabbit hole and a fiction-writing exercise. She revealed that she started with Marcellus, then wrote the humans around him. She explained, “One of the places where I was able to find a really good character was on YouTube, watching videos of naughty octopuses that were escaping from their enclosures, or just getting up to antics in aquariums. I remember thinking that would be such a fun voice to write, such a fun character to harness. The character of Marcellus came out of a little vignette that I wrote in a continuing education class.”
Van Pelt also revealed that Sally Field’s character, Tova, was based on her own Grandmother, “Beyond Marcellus, Remarkably Bright Creatures is a story of love and grief. Those are two emotions that everyone who walks this planet feels at some point, so the themes are very widely resonant. There’s just a wide range of ages and generations and characters that people can enjoy together.”
Bryan Unkeless, Peter Craig, and David Levine produced the film, while Shelby Van Pelt, Erika Hampson, Olivia Newman, Alisa Tager, Tony Lipp, and Alyssa Rodrigues serve as executive producers.
What did you think of the new trailer for Remarkably Bright Creatures? Will you be watching this movie when it starts streaming on Netflix in May? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed