Judging by the footage in the trailer, A24’s Civil War is an intense action ride with explosions, gunfire, and violence. Director Alex Garland even used real tanks, planes, and weapons to make Civil War look as authentic as possible. Kirsten Dunst, who stars as a photojournalist named Lee, recently described Civil War as “intense,” which led to some trauma in her personal life after the cameras stopped filming.
“We shot pretty much in order, and so the last two weeks were all gunfire and explosions — it was very intense,” Dunst said to Total Film. “I mean, I can leave it mostly on the set. But I did feel a little bit of trauma going back to normal life after this. I felt out of it for a good two weeks.”
Wagner Moura, who plays Lee’s colleague, Joel, added that the sounds from the weapons and tanks “made the whole thing very real.”
What to Expect in Civil War?
“In the near future, a team of journalists travel across the United States during the rapidly escalating Second American Civil War that has engulfed the entire nation, between the American government and the separatist ‘Western Forces’ led by Texas and California,” the official synopsis reads. “The film documents the journalists struggling to survive during a time when the U.S. Government has become a dystopian dictatorship and partisan extremist militias regularly commit war crimes.”
Civil War is written and directed by Garland (Ex Machina). Dunst and Moura star alongside Cailee Spaeny as Jessie, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Sammy, Sonoya Mizuno as Anya, and Nick Offerman as the President of the United States.
Producers include Gregory Goodman, Andrew Macdonald, and Allon Reich. A24 will distribute Civil War in the United States. With a rumored budget of $50 million, Civil War is A24’s most expensive film ever.
Civil War arrives in theaters on April 12, 2024.