Chris Rock has spent more than a decade away from the director’s chair, and his return is fittingly built around an actress attempting a comeback of her own. A24 has released the first trailer for “Misty Green,” Rock’s new Hollywood drama starring Rosalind Eleazar, which will make its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September.
Eleazar, who broke out playing MI5 agent Louisa Guy on Apple TV’s “Slow Horses,” stars as Misty Green, a once-promising actress trying to revive a career that never quite fulfilled its early promise. A24’s official synopsis is appropriately concise: “Years after her Hollywood breakthrough, a talented actress whose career has stalled fights for her second act.” Eleazar has since taken the lead in Netflix’s “Missing You,” but “Misty Green” represents a considerably larger feature-film showcase for the British actress.
The premise creates some obvious symmetry for Rock, who has not directed a feature since “Top Five” premiered at TIFF in 2014. That film also found him examining celebrity, addiction, artistic frustration, and the difficulty of reinventing yourself once the public has settled on who it thinks you are. Twelve years later, he is returning to Toronto with another show-business story about chasing a new beginning after Hollywood has seemingly moved on.
Rock wrote, directed, and co-stars in “Misty Green.” The unusually stacked supporting cast also includes Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick, and Topher Grace.
While Rock has previously drawn from foreign films—his 2007 directorial effort “I Think I Love My Wife” remade Éric Rohmer’s “Love in the Afternoon”—there is no announced source material behind “Misty Green.” A24 credits Rock as the film’s sole writer, suggesting this is an original screenplay rather than another remake.
Rock’s other directing credits include “Head of State” and “I Think I Love My Wife,” while he also produced and starred in the American remake of the British comedy “Death at a Funeral.” But “Top Five” remains his most personal and acclaimed film behind the camera, making his return to similar Hollywood territory especially intriguing.
A24 has not announced a theatrical release date for “Misty Green,” but audiences in Toronto will be able to see its world premiere in September. Watch the trailer below.
