What We Know About the Film
Pedro Pascal has fought zombies, ruled Mandalore, and saved the Fantastic Four. But nothing has terrified him quite like learning to play the cello. “I would choose fighting The Mountain in Game of Thrones over learning how to play the cello convincingly,” he jokes. “I would rather be tossed off a cliff with Nicolas Cage.”
That’s the level of commitment Pascal brought to Behemoth!, Tony Gilroy’s first directorial feature in 14 years. The film premiered to strong reviews at the New York Film Festival in early October 2026 and is already generating Oscar buzz — not just for Pascal’s performance, but for its innovative approach to music, storytelling, and the often-invisible art of film scoring.
Here’s everything we know about the film that’s got critics talking.
What Is Behemoth! About?
Behemoth! follows Alex Serian (Pedro Pascal), a gifted cellist who returns to Los Angeles after 20 years on the road. He comes from a family of musicians — his grandfather died playing on a film score in 1959, his father was a composer for cartoons and television, his mother was a successful musician, and his brother had a taste of fame in a ’90s rock band [8†L19-L24].
Alex is a third-generation studio musician, a former child prodigy who never quite fulfilled his potential. He’s been drifting from city to city, relationship to relationship, his cello the only constant in his life. Now he’s back in Hollywood, picking up session work on film scores — and each cue he performs triggers fragmented, non-linear flashbacks into his past [7†L15-L19].
The narrative weaves together his fraught family history, past romances, and his emotionally unavailable demeanor as he tries to reconcile with his past through music. He’s haunted by the specter of his ruthless father (Hank Azaria), caring for his ailing mother (JoBeth Williams), and increasingly drawn to a 15-year-old musical prodigy named Viviana Glenn (Alexa Swinton) who may or may not be his daughter [8†L28-L49].
The official synopsis puts it simply: “A gifted cellist returns home to Los Angeles after 20 years on the road. Music, which has been the constant, all-consuming river of his life, is about to lead him to a relationship that will change him forever” [2†L35-L38].
The Cast: A Murderer’s Row of Talent
Pedro Pascal leads as Alex Serian, and he appears in every single scene, portraying approximately 25 years of Alex’s life [15†L17-L19]. It’s his first true leading film role — a departure from the ensembles, creatures, and franchise machinery that have surrounded many of his best-known performances.
Olivia Wilde plays Carol Spedding, Alex’s volcanic former flame who stalks him to Los Angeles. One review compared her to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction — “a wealthy, married arts patron whose ferocious pursuit of Alex when he ends their affair makes her seem like a soul sister” [9†L37-L41].
Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby) plays Nadia Hynes, a fellow cellist who has a brief but deeply impactful relationship with Alex. The Hollywood Reporter described her as “the heart of the film” [21†L32-L34].
Alexa Swinton (And Just Like That…) plays Viviana Glenn, the 15-year-old prodigy who may be Alex’s daughter [8†L31-L33].
The ensemble also includes Will Arnett as Alex’s brother Andy (replacing David Harbour, who dropped out for personal reasons), Hank Azaria as Alex’s musician father, JoBeth Williams as his mother Ginnie, Matthew Lillard, Margarita Levieva, Kaya Ralls, and Erik Griffin [3†L22-L24].
The Director: Tony Gilroy’s Return
Behemoth! marks Tony Gilroy’s first feature as director since 2012’s The Bourne Legacy. In the intervening years, he created and showran Andor, the acclaimed Star Wars series widely considered the most creatively substantive project to come out of Lucasfilm in years [9†L8-L12].
Gilroy’s connection to Behemoth! is deeply personal. Long before he wrote The Bourne Identity, made Michael Clayton, or created Andor, he wanted to be a musician. He played guitar in a string of bands and came to Los Angeles hoping to become a studio musician. A session with some real players quickly disabused him of that notion — but his fascination with the scoring process never faded [18†L7-L14].
“Those scoring sessions were incredibly intense,” Gilroy recalled. “The time pressure was great. A huge orchestra. I just sat there going: There has to be a movie here” [18†L17-L19].
He wrote the script as a love letter to movie music, conducting a year of interviews with professional studio players while developing the film [19†L42-L44]. The result is a rigorously scripted, time-shifting character study in the mold of Michael Clayton — and a resonant ode to the art of scoring.
“It’s a little bit of a stretch that they made this,” Gilroy admitted, “and I’m sure it has a lot to do with Andor” [23†L9-L10].
The Music: Nine Composers and a “Utopian” Experiment
The most unusual aspect of Behemoth! is its score. Rather than rely on a single composer, Gilroy assembled nine composers — dubbed the Behemoth! Collective — to create distinct cues for the fictional movies Alex works on [12†L9-L12].
The collective includes some of the biggest names in film music: Michael Abels (Get Out), Emily Bear, Lukas Frank, Michael Giacchino (The Incredibles, Rogue One), James Newton Howard (The Dark Knight), Henry Jackman (Kingsman), Nami Melumad (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds), Brandon Roberts, and Alan Silvestri (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump) [17†L17-L20].
“I knew I had to have different voices,” Gilroy explained. “Once you’re going to open it up, you want to cast it like actors. I made backstories for all the shows, so all the shows have a story to them and I could tell all the composers what the plots of their show were” [17†L34-L37].
Gilroy described the arrangement as a kind of utopian experiment. “We just said, ‘OK, everybody’s going to get exactly the same amount of money. We made a basic, early manifesto for what the rules would be. And it’s this utopian thing'” [18†L34-L37].
The music is embedded directly into the film’s narrative — Alex’s performances, whether on stage or in the films he works on, trigger the flashbacks that reveal his past [17†L13-L15].
Pedro Pascal’s Cello Training: “Hell and Heaven”
Pascal’s preparation for the role was famously gruelling. He had just three months to learn the cello convincingly enough to play an internationally acclaimed session musician. He practiced three to four hours a day for approximately six weeks, carrying the cello everywhere with him [13†L6-L8] [24†L17-L20].
“You’re supposed to spend a year learning how to really hold the bow correctly and I had a week,” Pascal said. “I never caught up to it, which was the ecstasy of it, I suppose. It was a joy, but it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done creatively” [21†L28-L30].
He described the experience as “hell and heaven” — the hell of the physical demands and the meticulousness required, the heaven of being in lessons again, of stimulating that part of his brain [21†L24-L28].
“I’d never been so afraid,” he told Reuters at the London Film Festival. “I’ve been nervous about other jobs and the physical and emotional demands, but it was nothing like this” [10†L10-L12].
The Reviews: Strong, But Not Unanimous
Behemoth! holds an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 73 on Metacritic as of publication [20†L12-L13]. Critics have been mostly receptive, with particular praise for Pascal’s restrained, almost silent, reactive performance [5†L10-L12].
Deadline’s Pete Hammond called it “the rare movie set in the world of Hollywood music soundstages” and “undoubtedly a love letter to this crucial, usually final, aspect of the production process” [8†L12-L15].
Variety’s review praised Pascal’s “perky mystery” and said the film “scores on the level of authenticity” [1†L33-L36].
The Hollywood Reporter was more measured, calling it “an odd duck, alternately intriguing and frustrating” and noting that “the story’s internal engine seldom revs hard enough” — but praising the “thrilling sequences observing the workings of an orchestra employed on Hollywood’s scoring stages” [9†L17-L25].
The Guardian was harsher, describing it as a film that “hits all the wrong notes” [22†L23-L25].
The consensus seems to be that Pascal is brilliant, the music is exceptional, and the structure is ambitious but occasionally frustrating.
The Oscar Question
Behemoth! is positioned squarely in the awards season corridor, with a December 4 release date courtesy of Searchlight Pictures [3†L19-L20]. Pascal has never been nominated for an Oscar, and his performance here — quiet, reactive, carrying the entire film — is being described as “career-best” by several critics [20†L14-L16].
But the Best Actor race is crowded. IndieWire noted that Pascal faces competition from Matt Damon (The Odyssey), John Malkovich (Wild Horse Nine), Andrew Scott (Elsinore), Ryan Gosling (Project Hail Mary), and John Turturro (The Only Living Pickpocket in New York) [5†L14-L24].
The film’s innovative structure — and its nine-composer score — could also complicate its awards prospects, though Gilroy has larger ambitions than trophies [15†L31-L32].
Behemoth! is not
a typical Pedro Pascal project. There are no Mandalorians, no zombie apocalypses, no superheroes. There’s just a man, a cello, and a lifetime of regrets.
It’s Tony Gilroy’s most personal film — a love letter to an art form he’s spent decades observing from the outside, and a character study of a man who spent his life running from himself. It’s Pedro Pascal’s first true leading role, and by all accounts, he delivers.
The film opens in theaters on December 4, 2026. Whether it wins Oscars or not, it’s already achieved something rare: it’s a movie about music that critics agree gets the music right. And that, as Gilroy knows better than most, is no small feat.
