Is it possible to steal a movie out from under George Clooney and Brad Pitt, two of the matinee idols of our time? With “Wolfs,” Austin Abrams makes the case that you can.
The 28-year-old star, perhaps best known up to this point for dancing shirtless onstage to Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” in a flamboyant musical sequence in HBO’s “Euphoria,” again finds himself in a manner of undress in Jon Watts’ Apple TV+ comedy film. Here, he’s down to only his briefs and a pair of crew socks, running around Lower Manhattan trying to evade two fixers (Clooney and Pitt) toiling until twilight to clean up his mess.
In the big-budget but minor-key comedy written and directed by Watts — in a return to movies-for-adults form after his duties on the Tom Holland “Spider-Man” films — the charismatic Abrams is simply known in the script as “Kid.” When this one-night movie starts, he’s presumed ODed and dead after a busted one-night stand with a district attorney (Amy Ryan). Enter Jack (Clooney) and Nick (Pitt), rival fixers who’ve both been dispatched via some logistical confusion that turns out to be a deliberate strategy on the part of their boss (Frances McDormand, only heard in phone calls), to dispose of the body and reset the evening’s orbit. But the Kid emerges from the drunk of their car alive yet not so well, revealing in at least one rambling, jittery, one-take monologue what really went down with the DA.
In a looping, breathless rant with shrewd comic timing, Abrams reveals the Kid took on a drug heist for the thrill of the story. And in a performance that recalls Griffin Dunne’s manic turn in another New York all-nighter of a movie, Scorsese’s “After Hours.”
“It’s certainly a genre that’s interesting to me, definitely,” Abrams told IndieWire over Zoom from his home in Los Angeles, a “2001: A Space Odyssey” poster fixed on the wall behind him. “Something like ‘Eyes Wide Shut.’ I love that movie, though I know it’s not always people’s favorite Kubrick movie. I love how it’s shot and takes place in mostly one night. In terms of how much it would factor into a performance, not necessarily much, because what are you going to do, try to replicate something? I try to just be present to what’s going on around me.”
Abrams had never been to the Venice Film Festival, where “Wolfs” made its out-of-competition premiere this year, and during an especially sticky-hot early September along the lagoon of the Adriatic Sea. “Thankfully, it cooled down enough at night where, it’s still hot, but you were sweating a little bit less, like a quarter-cup less,” he said. “It was crazy. It was crazy to be just on the carpet with those guys and watching them do the carpet, and the whole day was something you just had to jump into and go with the flow of whatever the hell was happening.”
When he first received the script for “Wolfs,” Abrams knew only that Clooney and Pitt were set to star. (There’s already a sequel set up at Apple, which Abrams said he expects to be part of.) “No one knew anything about it other than that Brad and George were in it and that Jon was directing,” he said. “I had absolutely no idea what it was about, or anything like that. All I got was the interrogation scene.”
Abrams said he didn’t do a chemistry read with the actors. “It was a standard audition and then meeting with Jon, who I’ve known for a bit through some other friends … A big part of it was convincing myself it was possible to be able to do this and work with the two of those guys. You see those names, and you don’t think it’s going to be possible at all. It took a lot of hammering into my mind it was possible.”
As for the sequence where Abrams is running through lower New York City in only his underwear and socks, he said, “Every night was the longest night. We were filming that scene for, I don’t know man, like three, four weeks, way longer than I thought we were going to be… They just put me in the car and just told me to ‘fucking go over there’ and ‘run over there’ as fast as I could. I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was [in New York]. They would shut down certain parts of the street, while other parts were open to the public just walking around. There’s only so much you can do in New York in terms of what you’re able to shut down. I would be turning a corner and would run into regular people. They wouldn’t see any cameras, so they’re just kind of freaked out because they’re seeing a dude in his underwear running at them.”
So, really, just another day in New York City.
Meanwhile, Apple scrapped wider release plans and ended up dropping “Wolfs” in theaters for only one week before its streaming premiere on Apple TV+ (today, Friday, September 27), and with marquee stars like Clooney and Pitt, here’s a movie that could’ve done solid business with a wider theatrical window. Alas, “Wolfs” is part of Apple’s continuing bet on big-money projects to lure more subscribers. (See the recent streaming success of “Presumed Innocent,” Apple’s bonafide water cooler smash starring Jake Gyllenhaal.) Though Apple would’ve needed a robust theatrical partner — such as Paramount, which distributed “Killers of the Flower Moon” last year — to pull off a major push.
“The vision always was for it to be released wide, and certainly seeing it, we premiered it the other night, and it was great to see it with an audience. It really did play well,” Abrams said. “People have whatever priorities that they have that I am not privy to or know anything about, and everyone made whatever decision they thought was best for them. The desire always was to have it be seen in theaters, and it does make a difference.”
The question Abrams is always asked is surely what’s the deal with “Euphoria” Season 3? The shooting date — with principal cast members like Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney set to return — is now eyeing January 2025 after numerous starts, stops, ups, and downs at HBO for the Sam Levinson-created teen drama. How Abrams’ Ethan will factor into that season is another question. Ethan was the sweet-natured boyfriend of Kat, played by Barbie Ferreira, who cut ties with the series after the character was relegated to the sidelines in Season 2 — and that also included a harsh breakup with Ethan that some viewers felt betrayed both characters.
Abrams said while he’s “not tired” of being asked about “Euphoria” and when the new season will go, he added, “I just don’t have anything to say about it simply because I don’t know. I don’t know if I anticipate being included in the third season if they make a third season. I’d love to be included in it. I loved working on that project. That’s all I can really say.”
The new season is supposed to include a time jump — appropriate given the young actors and that Season 2 premiered almost two years ago in early 2022 — and given Ethan’s breakup with Kat, there may not be a place for Abrams this time around. Who knows if he’d even be in touch with his classmates like Rue (Zendaya) anymore?
“A hundred percent. Totally. You got it.”
Next up, Abrams stars alongside Julia Garner and Josh Brolin in “Barbarian” director Zach Cregger’s “Weapons,” which wrapped filming this past July. It’s set in a small Florida community and revolves around a series of disappearing children with a supernatural underpinning.
“It has a bit of the same vein of [‘Barbarian’],” Abrams said. “It follows some different folks and is all intertwined, that kind of style. There’s only a certain amount that I can say about it in the way that I don’t know how they want to present it to the public … A big part of what sets Zach apart is his comedy and how cutting it is, how genius it is.
Abrams also stars in Ethan Berger’s upcoming “The Line” as a fraternity pledge subjected to brutal hazing exercises. Abrams said, looking ahead, his goal is to “just keep working with great directors. I would love to really work with some classic directors that I’ve grown up watching. To be able to step up to the plate of that and rise to the occasion.”
That’s something he’d have to do a lot of homework for, but Abrams said, “I do a lot of homework. I try to not talk about those things so much, so I don’t know how it’s presented. Maybe it seems like [I don’t], which is a good thing. You don’t want to show any sort of homework. That’s the whole point.”
“Wolfs” is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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