Gary Oldman and Antonio Banderas look like they’re having a blast in the first trailer for “The Laundromat,” living the high life while Oldman puts on a thick accent that makes him sound like Lawrence Welk.
But who said he could have this much fun? “The Laundromat” is Steven Soderbergh’s story of the Panama Papers, a massive conspiracy of the uber-wealthy that involved money laundering, bribery, extortion … you name it. But Soderbergh has taken the route of his screwball comedies like “The Informant! instead, making the Panama Papers story into a lavish farce.
“Where the f— is my money,” one woman demands to know in the trailer? “Most of the time, we don’t even know,” Oldman says with a smile.
Regardless of the subject matter, Soderbergh has still assembled an impressive cast led by Meryl Streep as the ordinary widow investigating insurance fraud who leads the trail all the way back to the Panama City law partners of Oldman and Banderas.
Jeffrey Wright, Melissa Rauch, Jeff Michalski, Jane Morris, Robert Patrick, David Schwimmer, Cristela Alonzo, Larry Clarke, Will Forte, Chris Parnell, Nonso Anozie, Larry Wilmore, Jessica Allain, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Matthias Schoenaerts, Rosalind Chao, Kunjue Li, Ming Lo, James Cromwell and Sharon Stone all appear in the film and give it their own dose of zaniness.
Soderbergh is also working off a screenplay by Scott Z. Burns, who also wrote “The Informant!” and is adapting the book by Jake Bernstein, “Secrecy World: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite.” Lawrence Grey, Gregory Jacobs, Michael Sugar and Burns are all serving as producers.
“The Laundromat” is making its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival this week, followed by a screening at Toronto. Netflix is then releasing it in theaters for a brief theatrical run starting Sept. 27, with the film debuting on the streaming service on Oct. 18.
Watch the trailer for Soderbergh’s “The Laundromat,” first obtained by Variety, above.