‘Asteroid City’ heading to Stream on Peacock coming Week

Starting on August 11, Peacock will stream Wes Anderson’s stunning Americana desert film Asteroid City.

In the movie, an asteroid crash site in the desert acts as a tourist trap and the site of an annual camp for “stargazers and space cadets.” 

As the cast portrays a cast of performers and stage crew for a play, the plot device is a story-within-a-story. 

Among the impressive ensemble cast are Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jason Schwartzman, Matt Dillon, Maya Hawke, Steve Carell, Jeffrey Wright, Ed Norton, Margot Robbie, and Jeff Goldblum.

The movie received a six-minute standing ovation during its Cannes premiere in May. 

The project got mixed reviews from reviewers and audiences alike, many of whom concur that it exhibits the auteur’s characteristic dazzling photography but is dramatically inert, while earning $9 million over its opening weekend, the biggest grossing weekend for an Anderson picture.

“If the setting of Asteroid City feels succulent in that vintage Anderson way, the scenes and events that unfold there do not,” Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman wrote in a review.

“They add up to what may be the filmmaker’s most hyperactive yet coyly obtuse piece of storytelling. 

There are only a few main characters, but everyone in the movie seems to be reciting from the same turgidly empty-clever Anderson playbook.”