First look at Leonardo DiCaprio in Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

With BIRDMAN still reveling in Oscar nominations, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is already hard at work on his next film, THE REVENANT. This is the film that may have caused Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy to drop out of Danny Boyle‘s Steve Jobs biopic and SUICIDE SQUAD, respectively. Lest you think that Inarritu is returning to the same contemporary dramas he was known for before BIRDMAN like AMORES PERROS, 21 GRAMS, and BABEL, think again. THE REVENANT, based on a true story, is going to be another unique cinematic experience.

Shooting this month in Calgary (average nighttime low: 9 degrees) the writer-director has partnered with Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy to tell the true story of Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), an American fur trapper and frontiersman in the early 1800s. After being mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead, Glass made a heroic 200-mile trek back to civilization to find the men who abandoned him in his time of need, played by Hardy, Will Poulter, and Domnhall Gleeson.

Working with acclaimed GRAVITY cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Inarritu is only shooting for a few hours each day as he has committed to only using natural light and physical locations untouched by modern development to make THE REVENANT look as realistic as possible. With such a fine group of actors, I have no doubt we will be in for something amazing.

Production is going to stretch over the next three months, so I expect we will see several more images in the near future, but it is the reunion of Hardy and DiCaprio for the first time since INCEPTION that is bound to make this something special to see. Both actors are known for their intense work ethic so this should be good.

THE REVENANT opens in theaters on December 25, 2015.