The first trailer for Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s new stop-motion film Anomalisa debuted online this week.
Kaufman’s new film follows down-on-his-luck motivational speaker Michael Stone, who sets out to discover his own humanity when he meets a young woman at a speaking engagement. As any fan of Kaufman’s previous work like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation knows, the story will undoubtedly be more complex than that.
David Thewlis (Harry Potter, The Theory of Everything) stars as Stone, while Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Machinist, Road to Perdition) plays the cryptic Lisa. In an interesting twist, character actor Tom Noonan plays every other character in the film.
It seems fitting that Kaufman’s first foray into stop-motion animation deals with what it means to be human. The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Oscar-winner raised more than $400,000 on Kickstarter to make the film, and Paramount snatched up the rights after a strong premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this year.
Animator Duke Johnson (Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole) co-directs.
Anomalisa will be released in select theaters December 30. Check out the trailer above.