Following her current onscreen love triangle in A24‘s Materialists, Dakota Johnson is upping the ante with her next romantic comedy.
On Monday, Neon released the first trailer for co-writer, director and star Michael Angelo Covino‘s Splitsville, which sees him and Johnson as a couple in an open marriage who swings with their two friends going through their own marital issues. Watch it above.
After Ashley (Adria Arjona) asks for a divorce, good-natured Carey (Kyle Marvin) runs to his friends, Julie (Johnson) and Paul (Covino), for support. He’s shocked to discover that the secret to their happiness is an open marriage, that is until Carey crosses the line and throws all of their relationships into chaos.
Co-written by Covino and Marvin, Splitsville premieres Aug. 22 in theaters, also starring Nicholas Braun, David Castañeda, O-T Fagbenle and Charlie Gillespie.
Following the film’s Cannes premiere last month, where it earned an eight-minute ovation, Covino explained that they wanted to explore “characters who pretend to have more figured out than they do.”
Marvin added, “I think a lot of us and our friends were talking about the dynamics of relationships, and a lot of times we found ourselves lying a little bit about how we felt, or how good we felt in certain things, and I think that sort of started unpacking this idea of what happened if you just felt viscerally and sort of with instant jealousy or not jealousy or whatever those reactions were in just real time and let those play out as opposed to trying to intellectualize them and process them.”
