Richard Linklater’s ‘Blue Moon’ Trailer Arrives with Ethan Hawke Leading a Stellar Cast
Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon released its first official trailer today.
The film stars Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott. The trailer arrived on the film’s official Instagram account on Thursday. New York and Los Angeles audiences will see it first, on October 17, 2026. The nationwide expansion follows one week later, on October 24.
Linklater and Hawke have one of the more durable creative partnerships in movies today. They first collaborated in 1995 on Before Sunrise, a low-budget film about two strangers talking through the night in Vienna. They returned to those same characters in 2004 and again in 2013. And later came Boyhood. That project filmed intermittently over 12 years and earned Linklater a Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards. Their working dynamic has always been less about spectacle and more about the kind of slow, careful attention that most movies don’t have time for.
For Hawke, returning to a Linklater project means something specific. His work across the Before films and Boyhood helped define what it means for an actor to grow into a role over time, literally. The characters aged alongside the performers. Few directors ask that kind of patience of their collaborators, and fewer actors are willing to commit to it. Hawke has been that actor twice over. That history makes Blue Moon worth watching closely from the start.
The rest of the cast brings its own weight. Qualley has made a point of choosing work that demands something specific from her. Her time on The Leftovers and her role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood showed a performer thinking carefully about character rather than visibility. Cannavale, familiar from Boardwalk Empire and the Ant-Man films, brings a naturalism that tends to make other actors look better. And Andrew Scott’s performance in All of Us Strangers reminded everyone paying attention that he can carry a film entirely on emotional weight. His casting here says a lot about the kind of movie Blue Moon is trying to be.
Linklater tends to cast deliberately. His films are built around conversation and inner life. They require actors who can hold a scene without filling it with noise. With this group, that’s exactly what he’s got. It’s the kind of casting decision that tells you as much about a film as any trailer can.
The October release puts Blue Moon directly in awards season. It would be too simple, though, to frame the film purely in those terms. Linklater’s best work has always been more interested in the process of living than in arriving at conclusions. The Before trilogy didn’t resolve. Boyhood didn’t deliver a tidy moral. Blue Moon, at least from what the trailer signals, seems to be working in that same spirit.
Autumn is still four months away. But with Linklater at the helm and this cast in front of the camera, Blue Moon is already worth the wait.