WELCOME TO MARWEN Trailer

Fantasy gets serious in Welcome to Marwen, which promises to take an affecting look at how one man coped with the trauma of a brutal attack.

This story might ring a bell because it’s based on the life of Mark Hogancamp, who was beaten so badly outside a bar that he suffered brain damage. In an attempt to put his life back in order, he began creating models of a WWII-era town, populating it with versions of people he knew in real life. His meticulous work captured the attention of journalists, professors (I first heard about him in a folklore course), and eventually the award-winning documentary Marwencol. Now his life has been made into a fictionalized account, which hopefully explains how they came up with such a bizarre story.

The film will be a tricky blend of fantasy and reality, but rest assured that you’re in experience hands here. Director Robert Zemeckis has only been doing this stuff for decades, and in the process he’s given us several beloved classics. Yes, it will probably have that nice sheen on it that makes his films so widely accessible, but without that this material could be suffocatingly dark.

Steve Carell has been tasked with pulling off the multifaceted Mark, which gives him another opportunity to show his oft-forgotten range. The rest of the cast is a star-studded affair, with everyone from comedic actors to musicians filling out the real and fictional town.

This will be an odd and difficult film to pull off, but the players involved are the right ones to make it work. Perhaps this will be one of those weird, memorable, and meaningful films.

Welcome to Marwen is directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, and Diane Kruger. It will be released in the US on December 21st and in the UK on January 11th, 2019. For international release dates, click here.

Do you think they can pull off Welcome to Marwen? Let us know in the comments!