On the very same weekend that The Batman entered theaters, a very different Colin Farrell movie likewise opened, albeit in a much more limited run — A24 sci-fi drama After Yang. If you missed the opportunity to see it at the time, and the odds are that you did, the chance to put that right is approaching as After Yang makes it onto digital and disc in June.
To promote its upcoming home release, Lionsgate has shared a new trailer for the film (see above), which stars Farrell in a role as far from DC’s villainous Penguin as you can get. In After Yang, the Irish actor plays Jake, husband to Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith) and adoptive father to Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) and Yang (Justin H. Min), an android designed to act as an artificial sibling for Mika.
But after Yang unexpectedly breaks down, Jake will embark on a quest to mend him, all while reckoning with questions of love, connection, and loss. From Columbus director Kogonada, After Yang wowed critics when it played at Cannes last summer, with reviews praising its deeply moving and thoughtful story, as well as Farrell’s leading performance. Haley Lu Richardson likewise features in the cast.
Farrell is definitely having a moment right now, as he’s still got two more movies to come later this year. Irish drama The Banshees of Inisherin, also starring Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan, releases in October with Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives, about the 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue, following in November. Not to mention that he’s set to reprise his Batman role in HBO Max’s The Penguin series.
As for After Yang, this is one that’s not to be missed by any fans of artificial intelligence films like Ex Machina, Her, or, er, Artificial Intelligence. Catch it on Blu-Ray, DVD, and digital from this June 21.