Early reviews and production details are surfacing for Behemoth!, the upcoming musical drama written and directed by Andor creator Tony Gilroy and starring Pedro Pascal as a touring cellist returning to Los Angeles. Following recent festival screenings at the BFI London Film Festival and the Newport Beach Film Festival, critics are weighing in on the Searchlight Pictures release ahead of its December 4, 2026, U.S. theatrical debut. The project marks Gilroy's first feature directorial effort since 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and centers on an experimental narrative built around the work of nine distinct film composers.

In the film, Pascal plays Alex Sarian (also spelled Serian in some international press notes), a classical cellist from a prominent musical family. After spending roughly 20 years on the road performing with orchestras in cities ranging from Dallas to Chicago, Alex returns to his hometown of Los Angeles to work as a studio session player on Hollywood film scores.

As he plays through sheet music for fictional blockbusters on the scoring stage, the diegetic compositions bleed into non-linear memories of his past, linking his career struggles, romantic entanglements, and childhood trauma as a prodigy.

From the 'Rogue One' Scoring Stage to Casting Pedro Pascal

The concept for Behemoth! originated years ago on a Sony Pictures scoring stage, the historic room where classic MGM musicals were recorded. According to the Los Angeles Times, Gilroy was recording the orchestral score for Rogue One with composer Michael Giacchino and left every evening convinced there was a compelling movie set within that environment. After wrapping production on the Star Wars series Andor, Gilroy committed six months to interviewing working session musicians off the record, while production designer Jade Healy gathered reference photos of apartments and practice rooms from players during an Avatar scoring session.

Despite the extensive research, the project nearly collapsed before cameras rolled.

When a previously attached lead actor dropped out and forced a production delay, Gilroy was ready to scrap the film altogether. As a final effort, Gilroy and Andor producer Sanne Wohlenberg arranged a meeting with Pascal and knew within 10 minutes that he was the right fit to salvage the production.

"Pascal just gave me permission to use that exclamation point [in the title Behemoth!], which was there to remind me to have some silliness and craziness," Gilroy told the Los Angeles Times during a Newport Beach Film Festival screening. "He has all those things; he has this incredible effervescence and charm and fluidity, but he also has incredible sadness about him. He just let me do all the things I wanted to do."

Alongside Pascal, the ensemble cast features Olivia Wilde as Alex's persistent ex-lover Carol, Eva Victor as a fellow violinist and love interest named Nadia, and Will Arnett as Alex's aloof, podcast-hosting brother Andy.

According to Flicks, the Sarian family is rounded out by Hank Azaria as Alex's father, Peter, and JoBeth Williams as his mother, Ginnie. To capture the authentic backdrop of a touring musician's life, Healy bypassed the recognizable Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles—whose seats Gilroy remarked were ugly—and filmed concert sequences at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, which stands in for a Chicago venue.

A Nine-Composer Score and Divided Critical Reception

To bring the fictional Hollywood recording sessions to life, Gilroy invented four movies within the film, requiring nine distinct musical sources. Rather than asking a single composer to mimic multiple genres, Gilroy cast nine composers like actors to write the diegetic music. According to Muse Group and the Los Angeles Times, this credited "Behemoth!

Collective" includes Michael Giacchino, James Newton Howard, Alan Silvestri, Michael Abels, Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Henry Jackman, Nami Melumad, and Brandon Roberts.

Critics who caught early festival screenings are divided on whether this complex musical and narrative structure succeeds. In a review from the BFI London Film Festival, Film Feeder noted that the fragmented timeline and multi-composer approach leave the narrative feeling meandering, unfocused, and emotionally distant. Conversely, The Cosmic Circus praised Pascal's central performance, describing the movie as a "consistently bizarre but always engrossing portrait" that functions like an elongated piece of music, even if it occasionally stumbles under its own ambitious tonal shifts between melodrama and comedy.

Other reviewers highlighted how Gilroy applies his background writing the Jason Bourne spy thrillers to the pacing of a musician's biography.

According to Daily Sabah, the film opens with a brisk chase sequence featuring Alex fleeing Wilde's character, and later intercuts an orchestral action score with a sequence in which Alex steals a toothbrush from a guarded mansion to secretly run a paternity test—making a personal drama play out on screen like a high-stakes espionage operation.

What Viewers Should Know Ahead of Release

With the theatrical debut approaching, several logistical details and questions remain for prospective audiences:

Will Behemoth! open wide or in limited release on December 4, 2026?

The exact footprint of the initial rollout varies across industry listings. While the Los Angeles Times describes the December 4, 2026, debut as a limited U.S. theatrical opening, promotional posts from Searchlight Pictures and Muse Group state broadly that the film arrives in U.S. cinemas on that date without specifying whether it will expand in phases.

Did Pedro Pascal actually learn to play the cello for the film?

While working session musicians populate the on-screen orchestras, Pascal prepared specifically for the camera. Because Gilroy required all nine composers to finish their scores before principal photography began, Pascal was able to practice and learn the exact musical passages that appear on screen during the recording stage sequences.

Why do theater listings show different runtimes for the movie?

Early festival and theatrical listings have published conflicting runtimes for the feature. The Cosmic Circus reports a brisk runtime of 104 minutes, whereas international cinema listings from The Cinemen and Corso Cinema list the film at 2 hours and 4 minutes and 2 hours and 7 minutes, respectively. Searchlight Pictures has yet to clarify the discrepancy.

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