This might be Brie Larson's year. Nearly two weeks her superhero turn in Captain Marvel won over audiences and broke box-office records, Netflix dropped the trailer Friday for the Oscar winner's quirky directorial debut, Unicorn Store.
Larson, 29, stars in the film as Kit, a young woman in her 20s who is unwilling to become a full-fledged adult. After being kicked out of art school, she has to move back home with her parents and work at a temp job. Ready to put her childhood behind her, she accepts an invitation to a store where a mysterious salesman (Samuel L. Jackson) presents her with the opportunity to obtain her greatest childhood desire: a unicorn. She then decides to build a home that's "worthy" of the mythical creature.
Unicorn Store "is a love letter to everyone's inner child and a reminder that no dream is impossible," the film's Netflix description reads. The coming-of-age comedy is written by Samantha McIntyre. Larson and Jackson are joined by cast members Joan Cusack, Bradley Whitford, Karan Soni, Annaleigh Ashford and Ryan Hansen.
Unicorn Store debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2017. Netflix obtained the film's distributing rights in January. According to Moviefone, Rebel Wilson was initially slated to be the film's lead, and Beatriz at Dinner filmmaker Miguel Arteta was set to direct. In 2016, Larson was brought on as both star and director. The film currently holds a 68 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 48 percent grade on Metacritic.
Larson spoke with Variety at TIFF about what intrigued her about Unicorn Store. "I knew there was something about this script and this story that was really important to me," she told the publication.
"I thought it was purely an allegory to me that I could just project my own things on to," she continued. "I decided to pull old home movies and include them in the film, and in that I found all this footage of me as a kid wanting a unicorn. So I guess this has been very deep inside of me for a long time, and I just forgot."
Larson has a lot on her plate as of late. While Unicorn Store is just weeks away from its debut, she's been promoting the blockbuster hit Captain Marvel. Box Office Mojo says the film, in which Carol Danvers discovers the extent of her powers amid an intergalactic war between alien species, has earned $820,851,537 globally. Larson is set to reprise the role in Avengers: Endgame, coming in April.
Unicorn Store premieres April 5 on Netflix.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Dory Jackson is a New York-based entertainment journalist from Maryland. She graduated from Randolph-Macon College—in May 2016—with a focus in Communication ... Read more
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