Wolfs trailer reunites George Clooney and Brad Pitt

On cinema’s “It’s so over”/“We’re so back” scale, Wolfs surely has to qualify for the latter. It’s been 16 years since buddies Brad Pitt and George Clooney shared the screen (in 2008’s Burn After Reading, preceded by Steven Soderbergh’s Oceans trilogy), and in that time the box office has evolved dramatically from what it was when these two superstars were in their heyday. In some ways, the trailer for Wolfs—which premieres in theaters September 20—feels charmingly old-fashioned, right down to the Frank Sinatra soundtrack. It’s refreshing, really!

Wolfs is about two lone wolf fixers who unknowingly get called in for the same job. Neither wants to play nice, but the mysterious organization above their pay grade decides that they should work together to clean up the apparent murder of a young man. Except that young man was not actually murdered, and he’s in deep with some drug-related crime that entangles the two fixers into some dangerous conspiracy and forces them to rely on each other in order to get out of it. The trailer humorously plays up the duo’s disdain for each other and their reluctance to be “partners” in a way that’s reminiscent of an enemies-to-lovers rom-com. It’s a bromantic comedy, if you will.

Wolfs is written and directed by Jon Watts, who is at the vanguard of the current era of popular (and populist) movies as the director of Tom Holland’s Spider-Man trilogy. It’s produced by Apple Studios, which is also at the vanguard of current cinema culture as one of the streamer studios disrupting the box office status quo. Apple, at least, is willing to give its original films a healthy theatrical window, unlike rival Netflix. (Wolfs is being distributed by Sony Pictures.) That bodes well for a film that’s smaller in scale than the typical tentpole superhero fare, but still packing serious star power with Pitt and Clooney.

Pitt is still embroiled in a certain amount of scandal after being accused of abuse by his ex-wife Angelina Jolie. (The specter of spousal and child abuse did not prevent him from winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 2020, but further details of the alleged 2016 incident have emerged in the years since.) It’s an easy win for Pitt to team back up with Clooney, and it’s undeniable that even in the brief trailer we’re seeing a level of chemistry and charisma that’s rare to see on the big screen these days. Whether that alone can support the full movie, well, we’ll see.