Madame Web isn’t the only new Dakota Johnson movie that Sony is releasing this year. Daddio, starring Johnson and Sean Penn, hits theaters this summer. While early reviews are positive, the first trailer for Daddio was comically awful. Thankfully, the new trailer is an improvement.
Sony Pictures Classics has released a new trailer for Daddio, which does a better job of conveying the tone of this intimate character-driven story about a woman and the cab driver ferrying her across town in New York City. In addition to the new trailer, the studio has set a June 28 release date for the film.
Daddio marks the feature film debut of writer and director Christy Hall, who premiered the drama at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival to largely positive reviews (it currently has an 83% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes). The film, a two-hander in which Johnson and Penn are essentially the only actors, is set entirely in a taxi cab; their meandering conversation is the focus of the movie, which has the feel of a stage play.
If you read all of that and thought, hey, that sounds like one of those good movies for grown-ups they don’t make much anymore, you’re probably right—and you probably should not watch the first trailer, which does absolutely nothing to make Daddio look appealing.
I’d actually be interested to see a version of this trailer without that cloying score, which sounds like it was ripped from a fabric softener commercial urging me to bond with my mother over laundry.
The official synopsis for Daddio is also kind of a problem—no one wants to be told how to appreciate a movie before they even see it. That turns it into homework! I am an adult trying to watch a movie made for and by adults! If I want homework, I’ll do my taxes.
DADDIO celebrates the power found in those rare moments of pure human connection, even with the most unlikely person. This highly contained, yet kinetic character-study — encapsulated in one single cab ride — explores the complexities inherent to the secrets we keep, particularly the ones locked away on our phones. It’s about truth and illusion, how we so effortlessly substitute one for the other out of survival. It’s about the hurtful memories of childhood, how past trauma can manifest itself in profound ways. It’s about the dance between the pain and poetry that is the human experience.
While promoting Madame Web recently, Johnson discussed how difficult it was to get financing for Daddio, which she produced through her TeaTime Pictures banner. “I am discovering that it’s really fucking bleak in this industry,” Johnson said. “It is majorly disheartening. The people who run streaming platforms don’t trust creative people or artists to know what’s going to work, and that is just going to make us implode. It’s really heartbreaking.” I mean, she’s not wrong.
This article has been updated.
(featured image: Sony Pictures Classics)
