‘Nickel Boys’ Trailer: Buzzy Oscar Favorite Starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor Drops First Footage

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play persecuted Black boys who find friendship and hope in the trailer Oscar contender Nickel Boys, also starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

The trailer for the Orion and Amazon MGM Studios film shows Herisse and Wilson as the main characters found in Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickel Boys, facing the horrors of a harsh Floridian reform school while keeping each other sane.

What is Nickel Boys about?

According to the official synopsis:

Elwood Curtis’s college dream shatters alongside a two-lane Florida highway. Bearing the brunt of an innocent misstep, he’s sentenced to the netherworld of Nickel Academy, a brutal reformatory sunk deep in the Jim Crow South. He encounters another ward, the seen-it-all Turner. The two Black teens strike up an alliance: Turner dispensing fundamental tips for survival, Elwood, clinging to his optimistic worldview. Backdropped by the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, Elwood and Turner’s existence appear worlds away from Rev. Martin Luther King’s burnished oratory. Despite Nickel’s brutality, Elwood strives to hold onto his humanity, awakening a new vision for Turner.

The film is adapted from Whitehead’s novel by RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes. Ross also directs.

Along with Herisse and Wilson, the film also stars Daveed Diggs, Hamish Linklater and Fred Hechinger.

When does Nickel Boys come out?

It recently premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and will also screen at the New York Film Festival. It comes to theaters Oct. 25.