Tiffany Haddish, Melissa McCarthy, and Elisabeth Moss play mob wives-turned bosses in the trailer for The Kitchen. An adaptation of the graphic novel by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle, The Kitchen is one of this year's least conventional (and, in turn, most intriguing) comic book movies. The film takes place in Hell's Kitchen circa 1978, as the FBI arrests three major players in the Irish mafia. Left with little other choice, the men's significant others - namely, a devoted mother (McCarthy), a long abused housewife (Moss), and an outsider to the community (Haddish) - take charge of the family business... and come to realize they're actually pretty good at it.
Written by Straight Outta Compton co-writer Andrea Berloff (making her directing debut here), The Kitchen was scheduled to arrive in late September before Warner Bros. bumped it up to early August, a few months back. This suggests the studio is confident in the film and its ability to go head to head with some of the bigger movies arriving mid-summer. And with some major WB releases slated to arrive between now and then, The Kitchen's trailer will have plenty of opportunities to generate buzz on the big screen.
The trailer for The Kitchen is now online and is expected to screen with films like Godzilla: King of the Monsters in theaters over the upcoming weeks. You can check it out in the space below, followed by the movie's recently-unveiled poster.
The trailer does a nice job of establishing The Kitchen's violent tone and gritty style, which is a far cry from the comedies McCarthy and Haddish are best known for. Then again, both actors have demonstrated their range before in dramedies like Can You Ever Forgive Me? (which netted McCarthy an Oscar nomination earlier this year) and Ike Barinholtz's comedy-satire The Oath, respectively. Of course, part of The Kitchen's premise involves its characters being fish out of water, which only makes their casting feel all the more fitting. Moss, on the other hand, is well-acquainted with both darker genre fare and period dramas after her performances in TV series like The Handmaid's Tale and Mad Men. As a result, she seems perfectly at home in a full-blown crime drama like this.
Between its accomplished cast and crew, celebrated source material, and refreshing approach to the traditionally male-dominated mobster genre, The Kitchen seems like something to keep an eye out for, when it launches this summer. And while it's scheduled to debut over a busy frame in August (where films like Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Dora and the Lost City of Gold are also opening), it won't have much in the way of direct competition, as far as its older target demographic is concerned. Who knows: if all the cards fall in the right direction, The Kitchen may yet prove to be one of the surprise hits of the summer.
Source: Warner Bros.
