Tony Gilroy Returns After 14 Years With 'Behemoth!' at NYFF

Tony Gilroy has made his first original film in fourteen years, and "Behemoth!" premiered at the 64th New York Film Festival ahead of its December 4 theatrical release.

Gilroy, best known for writing the Bourne films and directing "Michael Clayton," shifts away from spy-coded crime and legal thrillers toward the mundane life of a working musician. The film follows Alex Serian (Pedro Pascal), a principal cellist in the Chicago Symphony who returns to L.A. to care for his dying mother, resume session work on orchestral film scores, and escape an ex-lover.

Who is the behemoth of the title?

Olivia Wilde plays Carol Spedding, a deranged ex-lover, top-shelf Chicago Symphony patron and institutional string-puller who bears the spirit of a behemoth herself. The Film Stage's review calls her "a jump scare of eccentricities," lurking in SUVs and marching through restricted areas to hunt Alex down. When Alex threatens to call the police, she retorts: "My driver is an off-duty sheriff." The review calls it Wilde's third extraordinary performance of 2026.

What makes the film work?

The film is structured around scoring sessions for fictional movies, where the musicians gossip about their personal lives and industry drama before sliding into complicated compositions "at the drop of a hat like it's nothing, merely second nature." Gilroy plays a metatextual game with the music, transforming diegetic music in a scoring session into the non-diegetic score of a memory it triggers in Alex — and back again. The review calls it "the never-ending magic trick that simply never gets old."

The film's score is arguably Gilroy's best idea. Nine composers contributed to it:

• Michael Giacchino
• James Newton Howard
• Alan Silvestri
• Henry Jackman
• Michael Abels
• Emily Bear
• Lukas Frank
• Nami Melumad
• Brandon Roberts

Their work is spread across four fake movies scored within the film, cello practice etudes, fictional TV theme songs, and the compositions of Alex's father.

Does the whole film hold up?

Not entirely. As Alex's mind wanders through memories set in Boston, Dallas and Chicago, the film takes on what the review describes as a third-person video game feel, checking off objectives like "Escape Carol Spedding" and "Hit All Marks in Studio Session." Not all of those objectives are compelling, and the review notes that one "can't help but wonder what organic charisma a different leading man might've brought to the table." The supporting cast — Alia Shawkat, Hank Azaria, Will Arnett, Eva Victor and Thomas Kretschmann — carries much of the film's weight.

Described as "a love letter to the music of the movies and the people who make it," "Behemoth!" ultimately lands as a winding, tangenting character study rather than a cohesive narrative. Gilroy's decision to render the scoring process through the people central to it keeps the film, in the reviewer's verdict, "a relatively riveting watch" — and it arrives in theaters on December 4.