Based on the bestselling novel from Nobel Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro and written and directed by Academy-Award winner Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit), Klara and the Sun introduces audiences to Klara (Jenna Ortega), an Artificial Friend who wants nothing more than to find the perfect home.
When Klara meets Josie (Mia Tharia), each immediately senses a kindred spirit in the other. Josie has a fraught relationship with her mother (Amy Adams), and they've suffered great loss, but Klara's innocent wonder and unwavering loyalty begin to heal the family and bring light to Josie's complicated world.
As we first reported on SFFGazette.com, the first trailer for the movie has now been released. Pulling back the curtain on this sci-fi world and the unique places this story promises to take audiences, it finds Ortega's robot eager to make a new friend and escape her lonely existence.
Oh, and for anyone expecting Waititi's trademark wacky humour, not only is that not front and centre here, but the Thor: Love and Thunder director recently claimed that Klara and the Sun is his "most dramatic film."
He later told Vanity Fair, "At first, when I was writing, I was like, 'Make this a Taika film and full of dumb f***ing robot humor.' And that didn’t really work when I was writing it. It took away from the book, and I’m like, 'Why am I adapting this really amazing book and then trying to break away from it?'"
"I like questions like: Is love a program? Because if you’ve done enough therapy, they’ll tell you that you can program yourself to believe anything," he continued. "It gives hope to a lot of people, but it’s also weird. But I don’t have the answer—I don’t have the answer to what is right or wrong."
When it came to casting Klara, whose perspective this story takes place from, Waititi said he wanted "someone young and hip and cool," with Wednesday star Jenna Ortega fitting the bill. "She was young and hip and cool and weird. And that sort of appealed to me," he explained. "She’s incredibly advanced and intelligent and mature and quite intimidating when you talk to her."
"She had sort of made me feel uncomfortable and a little bit out of my depth, and I thought, Oh, that’s a good challenge," the director said of the actress, who has been tasked with playing a character who is the polar opposite of Wednesday Addams.
Directed by Taika Waititi and written by Waititi and Dahvi Waller, Klara and the Sun is based on the book by Kazuo Ishiguro. Produced by David Heyman, Garrett Basch, and Waititi, the executive producers include Gary Barber, Alex G. Scott, Jeffrey Clifford, Rosie Alison, and Kazuo Ishiguro.
Starring Jenna Ortega, Amy Adams, Mia Tharia, Aran Murphy, with Steve Buscemi and Natasha Lyonne, Klara and the Sun arrives in theaters on October 23, later this year.