As the new poster for his forthcoming movie “Presence” suggests, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has done it all and then some. The eclectic and prolific filmmaker has pretty much attempted every genre: made popcorn entertainment like the “Ocean’s” and “Magic Mike” trilogies, acclaimed Oscar-winning dramas (“Traffic,” “Erin Brockovich”), comedies, (“The Informant”) compelling and comedic crime dramas (“Out Of Sight,” “Logan Lucky”), thrillers of all stripes (“Contagion,” “Unsane”), and low-budget arthouse indies like his career-making debut, “Sex, Lies And Videotape.” And for “Presence,” the filmmaker tackles the sub-genre of the eerie ghost movie, perhaps the closest he’s ever come to making a horror film outside of “Unsane.”
And Soderbergh tends to get on creative riffs with writers he does repeat business with. For a minute there, that collaboration was with Ed Solomon, who wrote the filmmaker’s “Mosaic,” HBO series, the “No Sudden Move” movie, and the Max limited series, “Full Circle” in succession. Of late, Soderbergh’s experienced a fruitful partnership with writer David Koepp (“Jurassic Park,” “Spider-Man”) who wrote “Presence” and the 2021 paranoia thriller, “Kimi.”
The ”Presence” logline is pretty bare bones, but the movie is about a family who discovers they are not alone when they move into a new house. And yes, it’s a ghost thriller, but it’s shot from the POV of the specter, which essentially makes Soderbergh’s roving camera a character in the film.
Premiering at Sundance earlier this year—and only announced a month before as a surprise film— “Presence” stars Lucy Liu, Julia Fox, and Chris Sullivan, who starred in Soderbergh’s Cinemax series, “The Knick.” The film also includes Callina Liang, Eddy Maday and West Mulholland. After strong reviews out of Utah, Neon acquired the film for U.S. release.
As usual, Soderbergh acted as his own director of photography under the pseudonym Peter Andrews and edited the film under the moniker Mary Ann Bernard. The composer for the film was Zack Ryan, who previously collaborated with Soderbergh on the aforementioned series “Full Circle.”
Neon hasn’t set an exact date, but in an eerie new teaser trailer, it announced that the film will arrive sometime in January 2025. Watch the new teaser below.