Who exactly is Molly Bloom and what is her game? In the new trailer for Molly’s Game, Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, her defense lawyer is only beginning to scratch the surface.
Sorkin, the award-winning writer behind The West Wing and The Social Network, also penned the script based on the memoir of Molly Bloom, a cocktail waitress turned “Poker Princess” who unexpectedly found herself running an elite, high-stakes poker ring for A-list celebrities in Los Angeles and New York. “In this room,” says Bloom, “you couldn’t buy your way in.”
If he set out to create, as one character describes it, “the world’s most exclusive, glamorous, and decadent man-cave,” Sorkin appears to have succeeded, with the visually stimulating trailer giving glimpses of chandeliered poker rooms, white-jacketed sommeliers, and of course, men sitting around playing with multicolored fortunes.
The film, like the underground poker empire it depicts, is a full house of stars, including Jessica Chastain as Molly, Idris Elba as her defense lawyer, Kevin Costner as her father, Michael Cera as a celebrity poker player, Player X (sadly, no cameos from Leo, Tobey, or Ben, whom Bloom claims were among her clients), and Chris O’Dowd as the man who introduces her to the Russian mob.* Buckle up: Things are about to get crazy. Molly ends up in way over her head, at least if the trailer’s blood, guns, and raids are anything to go by.
Molly’s Game is scheduled for release on Nov. 22, 2017.
*Correction, Oct. 5, 2017: This post previously identified Michael Cera as a “Sorkin alum.” Molly’s Game is their first collaboration.
