Netflix has released the first images and trailer for the movie directorial debut from Dan Levy.
Levy, 40, signed a big deal with Netflix to produce a range of content following the success of Schitt’s Creek. His first movie as director, Good Grief, will hit screens on January 5th.
On X yesterday, Netflix gave a brief synopsis alongside a photo of showing Levy and Luke Evans hugging.
“When Marc’s husband Oliver (Luke Evans) unexpectedly dies, his world shatters. Sending him and two best friends on a soul-searching trip to Paris that reveals hard truths each need to face.”
Dan Levy in ‘Good Grief’ (Photo: Netflix)
Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Levy corrected early press reports that called the movie a rom-com. He said he thought of it more as a “dramedy” covering serious issues around death and grieving. It’s also about the bond between friends.
“Having written 80 episodes about an actual family, I felt compelled to tell a story about found family and the importance of it,” said Levy.
“I lost my grandmother toward the tail end of the pandemic, and I was in a very strange headspace in terms of feeling the weight and the profound sense of tragedy of what the COVID pandemic had done for all of us, while at the same time trying to honor the passing of someone who meant so much to me,” says Levy.
He also lost his dog around the same time.
“It was hard for me to feel the specificity of loss when all I was feeling was grief for so long. It was that conversation that really expedited the concept of the movie.”
(Photo: Netflix)
The movie co-stars Ruth Negga and Himesh Patel as the friends who travel to Paris with Marc (Levy). Celia Imrie plays Marc’s lawyer, while French actor Arnaud Valois (pictured below) plays a man whom Marc meets one day at an art gallery. They share a moment that reminds Marc he might love again someday.
Although Levy says Good Grief will be different in tone from Schitt’s Creek, there will be some similarities.
“In so many ways, I feel like they both share a level of uncomfortable honesty,” he remarks. “I had to access the most vulnerable parts of my own self and my relationships in the hopes that they were universal. While Good Grief is tonally very different, I think the level of honesty is still there and a desire to remind people that things are going to be okay.”
Netflix dropped a trailer for the movie today. Check it out below.
