No./5 Saddle up for Jordan Peele’s bad miracle
An exclusive fresh peek at the director's much-anticipated new ranch-set horror
JORDAN PEELE’S ELUSIVE new film, his third after the triumphant Get Out and brain-spinning Us, is another project veiled in Pentagon-level secrecy. The world has been poring over the trailer and every poster for Nope for clues. Perhaps the most unexpected hint can be seen in this exclusive new still, given to Empire by Peele: a crew hoodie for much-maligned 2001 adventure movie The Scorpion King, as worn by hero James Haywood (Daniel Kaluuya). What could it mean? More than the alien plush toys or inflatable-tube men, this piece of attire presents myriad questions. Is Nope set in the past? Is Kaluuya’s Hollywood horse trainer an avid collector of Dwayne Johnson memorabilia? Will Johnson himself beam down from the vast, circular cloud hovering over the ranch as the hybrid scorpion-man ruler?
We’ll find out this summer. But one thing we can be sure of is that Nope is a very exciting prospect indeed. It sees Peele and Kaluuya reunited five years after Get Out catapulted both into the Hollywood mainstream. Since then, both have won Oscars, Peele for his Get Out screenplay, Kaluuya for Judas And The Black Messiah. Now they’re back together for a film that promises all the intrigue and terror of Peele’s work to date, but on a grander scale.
Where Get Out and Us unfolded largely in shadowy interiors, Nope is set in the dusty Californian countryside, its characters — also played by Keke Palmer, Steven Yeun and Barbie Ferreira — exposed to what appears to be an alien invasion. But many questions remain. Is that a figure lying in the dust behind James? Is the whole alien thing a giant misdirect by Peele? What’s making a horse on one of the posters fly? With James branding the event that’s terrorising his home “a bad miracle”, expect biblical levels of chaos. Maybe we’ll get that Scorpion King cameo after all.