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After years in development, the Ron Howard-directed survival thriller Eden is nearing its theatrical debut — and now it has a new trailer to entice audiences with fresh official glimpses of a star-studded cast trying to build a new life in the untamed wilderness of the Galápagos Islands.

Howard probably isn’t the first filmmaker you think of when dreaming up directors for a pulse-pounding story of survival, but when he stepped behind the camera for Eden, he certainly had no shortage of talent to work with: The film’s ensemble cast is led by Ana de Armas, Daniel Brühl, Vanessa Kirby, Jude Law, and Sydney Sweeney, all working from a screenplay by Tetris writer Noah Pink. But even all that star power wasn’t enough to keep the production from suffering a series of delays, primarily due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, which hit a matter of months after Howard boarded the project in late 2022. Those delays cost him a potential star in Daisy Edgar-Jones, who was in early talks but had to bow out in order to fulfill her commitment to Twisters, but Eden still managed to wrap in time to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024, and now it’s almost ready to reach mainstream audiences.

‘Eden’ Draws Inspiration from Real Life

Based on actual events, Eden‘s story begins in 1929, when German doctor Friedrich Ritter (Law) and his wife Dora (Kirby) leave their homeland in an attempt to reject modern society’s distractions and focus on what truly matters. After arriving on the small, sparsely populated isle of Floreana, Friedrich writes a manifesto while Dora tries to mitigate the symptoms of her multiple sclerosis through meditation. These simple beginnings are short-lived, however; before long, the couple is joined by a series of new arrivals, each of whom has their own story — and their own motivations for starting over, far from home. As the film’s logline teases, “What follows is a chilling descent into chaos where tensions spiral, desperation takes hold, and a twisted power struggle leads to betrayal, violence, and the deaths of half the colony.”

While early critical response out of Eden‘s festival berth proved disappointingly tepid — the film came out of TIFF with a Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score of 57 percent — it isn’t uncommon for movies to earn more favorable reviews once they reach general release, and despite Howard’s somewhat spotty track record with thrillers, there’s no debating his extremely steady hand as a filmmaker. After making his directorial debut with Grand Theft Auto in 1977, he soon started an impressive streak of major hits, including Splash (1984), Cocoon (1985), Parenthood (1989), and Apollo 13 (1995). And further proving that he has a way with a fact-based story, at the 74th Academy Awards in 2002, he took home Best Picture and Best Director for his work on A Beautiful Mind (2001).

Intrigued by all this? If so, you won’t have to wait long to see more. Eden arrives in theaters on August 22, 2024.