HBO has revealed a brand-new trailer for their upcoming film Reality, which stars Sydney Sweeney as NSA convicted whistleblower Reality Winner, who in 2017 leaked documents that showed Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.
Tina Satter wrote the play Is This A Room back in 2019 about Winner’s case based on the tapes from the FBI interrogation of the NSA agent, and is now adapting it into a feature film, which she directed and co-wrote with James Paul Dallas. Besides Sweeney, the cast includes Josh Hamilton and Marchánt Davis. The film first premiered during the Berlin Film Festival to buzzy reviews, and it was then acquired by HBO, who saw an opportunity to build an Emmy campaign around it and its lead actress, Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney. It will premiere on May 29 at 10 pm ET, when it will also be available to stream on Max. Here is the official logline for the film:
“On June 3, 2017, 25-year-old former American intelligence specialist Reality Winner is confronted by FBI agents arriving at her home to question her suspected role in the mishandling of classified information. Based on true events, the film’s dialogue is directly from the transcript of their tense and transfixing conversation.”
Check out the new trailer here:
Sydney Sweeney will likely get her third Emmy nomination with Reality
It’s already evident by the trailer that the reviews are not wrong, and this is an absolutely killer performance by Sydney Sweeney. The actress made a splash in the first two seasons of Euphoria, but really jumped to star-in-the-making status with Mike White’s The White Lotus season one, where she played a pivotal role to perfection. Her performances in both of those shows earned her two Emmy nominations in a single year, which not many people can say about their careers.
With that, she also became Hollywood’s new “It” girl, and executives started throwing projects her way, left and right. As part of that, she signed up for SJ Clarkson’s Madame Web, starring Dakota Johnson (though you know the marketing is heavily going to focus on Sweeney, who is heavily rumored to be playing a key character; see below), but also low-to-mid-budget films like Reality and the upcoming rom-com Anyone But You, co-starring Glen Powell, a project that is all over Page Six.
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Both of those are Sony projects, as the actress seems to be in a very good relationship with the executives there; so much so that they started developing a Barbarella movie around her, with Sweeney starring in and executive producing, but with no writer or director attached, in one of the biggest question marks in studio decisions of the past few years.
Anyone But You and then Madame Web will finally prove if she’s a bankable star or not. So far, while she’s been in a few films, she hasn’t really been in theaters much since her back-to-back breakout roles. So while HBO may like being in business with her, whether Sony will really enjoy that partnership remains to be seen. Reality, being a TV film, will not prove her case either way, but might help her raise her profile with the audience and other studio executives, especially if she earns another Emmy nomination.
It’s also a good month to be an HBO subscriber, from having something like White House Plumbers to enjoy, to getting the final episodes of Succession and seeing the resolution of that incredible show, to now watching what is likely going to be an amazing film like Reality, the network might be one of the biggest winners of the year in terms of the quality of the projects they’ve put out (don’t forget The Last of Us was also out a few months ago, and they are following Succession with The Idol, which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival later this month).
What did you think of the trailer? Are you a fan of Sydney Sweeney’s, or are you not very familiar with her work? What has been your favorite HBO series this year so far? Let us know on our social media, and stay tuned for more on Reality coming soon!
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