Darren Aronofsky, Austin Butler Crime Thriller ‘Caught Stealing,’ and Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell Romance ‘A Big Bold Beautiful Journey’ Get First Looks

variety.com:

Brent Lang Executive Editor It’s not all superheroes, all the time. Studios are still willing to take a few bets on directors with compelling visions, hoping that they can offer up something distinctive and compelling at a time when multiplexes are filled with more of the same.

So give Sony Pictures credit for backing not one, but two of these riskier projects — Darren Aronofsky‘s “Caught Stealing” and Kogonada’s “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.” The former is a crime thriller about a former baseball player (Austin Butler) who gets caught up in New York City’s underworld in the 1990s, while the latter is a romantic fantasy that follows two middle aged people who step through a magical portal into their past lives.

The studio gave theater owners a first look at both projects during its CinemaCon presentation on Monday night. “Caught Stealing” is a chance for Aronofsky, best known for making movies that are heavy on misery and suffering (see: “Mother!,” “Requiem for a Dream,” “The Whale”), to flex some very different muscles. “I wanted to do something that was simply put, a lot of fun,” Aronofsky said, acknowledging how unlikely that sounds.

So he opted to return to a pre-9/11 time in New York when things seemed a lot less dire. “It was a great time to be young and alive,” Aronofsky said.