'The Goldfinch' trailer with Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman gives life to emotional novel

If you couldn���t handle the literary gut-punch that was Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize winner The Goldfinch, you’re not ready for the film adaptation.

Released by Warner Bros. on Wednesday, the first trailer for The Goldfinch film, starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman, offers an emotional glimpse of Theodore “Theo” Decker and the tragedy that changed his life.

While visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, 13-year-old Theo found himself a survivor of a bombing that killed his mother. Amid the chaos and the rubble, he takes a Dutch painting of a goldfinch chained to a perch, his mother’s favorite. He clings to the painting as the one tangible connection between him and his parent.

Kidman plays Mrs. Barbour, the socialite friend of Theo’s mom who takes the boy in after he’s abandoned by his father. With Hobie (Jeffrey Wright), an antique shop owner, she helps Theo deal with the aftermath.

Elgort, who’s also set to star in another high-profile role of Tony in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, stars as adult Theo, who deals with self-medication and the underworld art scene as he travels from New York to Las Vegas to Amsterdam.

Directed by John Crowley (Brooklyn) and adapted by Oscar nominee Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), The Goldfinch also stars Oakes Fegley (Pete’s Dragon) as Young Theo, Aneurin Barnard (Dunkirk) as Boris, Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) as Young Boris, Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story) as Xandra, Luke Wilson (The Royal Tenenbaums) as Larry, Ashleigh Cummings (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) as Pippa, Willa Fitzgerald (Little Women) as Kitsey Barbour, Aimee Laurence (Chicago P.D.) as Young Pippa, Denis O’Hare (American Horror Story) as Lucius Reeve, and Boyd Gaines (Driving Miss Daisy) as Mr. Barbour.

goldfinch
Warner Bros.

The Goldfinch will be released in theaters on Sep. 13.

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