Behemoth! Is at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes, but Critics Split on Pedro Pascal's Cellist Drama: Is It Worth Seeing Dec. 4? Release Date, Cast, Nine Composers and Why They May Cost It an Oscar Category. My Take Before I've Seen It

The thing that hooked me about Behemoth! isn't Pedro Pascal, and I say that as someone who will watch him do almost anything. It's the idea. Somebody made a whole movie about the people who play the music in other movies: the session players, the orchestrators, the folks in the room at 9 a.m. while the rest of us are asleep. Their names scroll past in the end credits while everybody hunts for a coat. I like that this film puts them first.

Now the honest part. I haven't seen it. It premiered at the New York Film Festival on Oct. 2, it doesn't open in the U.S. until Dec. 4, and what I have is the reviews, the interviews and the reporting. So treat this as a field guide, not a review: what the film is, what critics agree on, where they fight, a few facts that aren't in most headlines, and the question I care about most, which is whether it's worth making the trip.

One more note before we start. A lot of coverage talks about movies like they're either a masterpiece or a miss. The reviews of this one don't say that. They say something more interesting, and I think more useful.

What is Behemoth! about, who is in the cast and when does it come out?

Behemoth! is written and directed by Tony Gilroy and distributed by Searchlight Pictures. It's a drama about Alex Serian, a gifted cellist played by Pedro Pascal, who returns to Los Angeles after about 20 years on the road and gets pulled into the world of Hollywood film scoring, with his musical family close behind. That's roughly the whole official pitch, and I'm keeping this spoiler-free on purpose.

• Pedro PascalAlex Serian, the cellist
• Olivia WildeCarol Spedding, Alex's ex-girlfriend
• Eva VictorNadia, a colleague and new love interest
• Will ArnettAndy Serian, Alex's brother
• Hank AzariaPeter Serian, Alex's father
• JoBeth WilliamsGinnie Serian
• Alexa SwintonViviana
• Also in the castMatthew Lillard, Margarita Levieva, Erik Griffin, Kaya Ralls

This is Gilroy's first film as a director in 14 years. His last was The Bourne Legacy in 2012, and in between he mostly worked in television, including as showrunner of Andor. Before that, he directed Michael Clayton and Duplicity, so a movie about musicians is a real left turn for him.

The cast almost looked different. Oscar Isaac was attached when Gilroy announced the project in March 2025 and was out by August, which is when Pascal came in. David Harbour was announced in October 2025 and left in January 2026, and Wikipedia says he stepped away because the final season of Stranger Things had left him overwhelmed. Will Arnett was cast to take his place. When I line those two exits up, I notice how many things had to shift for this exact lineup to exist. Whether that's a good omen or just a fun fact, I honestly can't tell you.

In the U.S., Behemoth! opens Dec. 4, 2026. Comic Basics and Movie Insider both describe that as a limited release, which usually means big cities first, though I haven't seen a theater list. The U.K. date is also Dec. 4, per The Strad. Australia's classification board gave it an M rating, according to Wikipedia. I couldn't find a U.S. MPA rating, so I won't guess one.

Is Behemoth! good? Its Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores, explained

Short version: well liked, not universally loved. Here are the two numbers everybody is quoting, and what they do and don't tell you.

A quick reminder on how these work, because it trips people up. The Rotten Tomatoes percentage is the share of reviews that are positive, not a grade. A film where almost every critic says "pretty good" can land higher than a film where half the critics call it a masterpiece and a quarter can't stand it. A 7.2 average next to an 85% tells me I'm looking at a lot of "liked it" reviews and not a pile of raves. That's my reading of the numbers, not something any outlet said.

The score has also moved. Comic Basics reported an early 80% on 15 reviews, and the later snapshot Wikipedia cites shows 85% on 40. I couldn't open Rotten Tomatoes myself, and I didn't find an audience score in the coverage, so the live pages are the place to check where it sits now.

What are critics saying about Behemoth!? Where they agree and where they fight

I sorted six reviews into a ledger. The summaries are mine, and the grades are the ones the critics gave, where they gave one. I read several of these through Wikipedia's review summary and search excerpts rather than the full text, so I've kept my paraphrases close to what's reported.

• TheWrapZachary LeePositive

  Calls it a love letter to film music and to the complicated, passionate musicians who make it.

• IndieWireDavid EhrlichB+

  Found it slipperier and more elegant than its giant title suggests.

• /FilmSlashFilmPositive

  Calls it Pascal's most complex role and his best performance so far.

• The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMixed

  Describes a strange bird that is intriguing and frustrating by turns, and slow in places that need speed.

• Screen DailyNikki BaughanMixed

  Praises Pascal as terrific playing a tortured creative, but says the story leans on cliché and feels too fragmented to leave a lasting emotional mark.

• The GuardianOwen Myers2 of 5

  Argues that a character study with this little plot needs more juice than the film has.

Wikipedia's overview of the reviews puts the pattern plainly: praise for Pascal's performance, Gilroy's direction and the score, and criticism of the writing and structure. Read down my ledger and you can see the fight. It's not about whether the film is well made. It's about whether a story this loose earns 127 minutes. The same quality, lots of mood and little plot, is what IndieWire and TheWrap respond to and what the Guardian can't forgive.

That's a taste split, not a quality gap, and those are the splits I trust least when I'm trying to guess whether I'll like something. It means the question isn't "is it good?" so much as "is it good for how I watch movies?" The three-question test in my take is built around exactly that.

Why does Behemoth! have nine composers, and can its score still win an Oscar?

This is the detail I'd put in the headline if headlines had room. Gilroy didn't hire a composer. He hired nine, credited together as the Behemoth! Collective:

• Michael Abels
• Emily Bear
• Lukas Frank
• Michael Giacchino
• James Newton Howard
• Henry Jackman
• Nami Melumad
• Brandon Roberts
• Alan Silvestri

According to World of Reel and Dark Horizons, each of them wrote music for a different fictional film inside the movie, so every invented picture gets its own musical identity. Film Music Reporter says the soundtrack also includes titles for those invented films, a solo cello practice etude and four invented features being scored.

Some of these names already had history with Gilroy. The Playlist notes that James Newton Howard scored all three of Gilroy's earlier films as a director, Brandon Roberts wrote the music for the second season of Andor, and Michael Giacchino scored Rogue One, the Star Wars film Gilroy extensively reshaped in post-production.

Here's the catch. Classic FM and World of Reel both report that Academy rules cap credited composers at three, which would likely make the film ineligible for Best Original Score. The Playlist is more cautious and says nine composers may complicate its eligibility. I couldn't find a ruling from the Academy on this specific film, so I'd treat "likely" as the right word and "ruled out" as premature.

My opinion: Gilroy made the right trade. A movie about film scoring that sounded like one composer's signature would be telling a small lie about its own subject, because Hollywood music is a crowd of voices behind one sound. If that costs a trophy category, I think it's a fair price. I wrote about a different Oscar rulebook wrinkle in my piece on the AI movie chasing a nomination, and my full awards picks are in my 2027 Oscars ballot.

Did Pedro Pascal really learn the cello for Behemoth!? What he said in London

Yes, he learned it, and he's been unusually candid about how hard that was. At the BFI London Film Festival premiere on Oct. 13, Reuters reported, Pascal said learning to play convincingly was the most challenging task of his career, and he joked that he would rather fight The Mountain from Game of Thrones. Earlier, in a Vanity Fair interview summarized by JoBlo, he said that holding the bow correctly takes a full day's lesson, and that's moving fast.

There's a human detail I love in all this. Per the same JoBlo coverage, Gilroy told Vanity Fair he first worried Pascal might be superficial or flighty, and Pascal had his own doubts about taking the job. They clicked within an hour of meeting. Two people who each expected the other to be a problem, and then it worked. I'm a sucker for that.

The audience that will watch hardest is string players. The Strad, a magazine for string musicians, sent a writer to the London premiere specifically to judge how his playing held up. That's the real test for a film like this: not whether a general audience buys it, but whether a cellist in the back row does.

When can you see Behemoth!? The road from the first announcement to Dec. 4

Here's how Behemoth! got from announcement to your local theater, using the dates Wikipedia and the festival listings give. The last three are scheduled, not done.

• Mar 2025

  Gilroy is announced as writer and director, with Oscar Isaac attached to star.

• Aug 2025

  Isaac is out and Pascal is in negotiations. Searchlight acquires the project.

• Oct 27, 2025

  Filming begins in Los Angeles.

• Jan 2026

  David Harbour exits and Will Arnett is cast. Filming wraps on Jan. 23.

• Jul 14, 2026

  First trailer arrives, and Searchlight dates the film for Dec. 4.

• Oct 2, 2026

  World premiere as the centerpiece of the 64th New York Film Festival.

• Oct 13, 2026

  U.K. premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.

• Oct 25, 2026

  Scheduled as the closing film of the Montclair Film Festival.

• Oct 28, 2026

  Scheduled gala screening at the Tokyo International Film Festival.

• Dec 4, 2026

  Release date in the U.S. (limited, per Comic Basics and Movie Insider) and in the U.K.

The Chicago International Film Festival is also on its schedule, according to Wikipedia, but I didn't find the date. If you live near one of those festivals, those are your earliest chances to see it. After that, it's Dec. 4.

Is Behemoth! worth seeing in theaters? My take before I've seen it

Here's where I land, and it's an opinion, not a review. The reviews tell me two things I believe. First, the idea and the lead performance are strong enough that people are talking in October about a film that opens in December. Second, the script is where it can lose you. Those are the two questions I'd carry into the theater.

I get nervous when a film is praised for mood and criticized for plot, because mood is wonderful at 4 p.m. on a festival Saturday and a harder sell at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday after work. At 127 minutes, that matters. But Gilroy is best known for tightly built scripts, and a loose, fragmented one from him is a more interesting risk than a safe one. I'd rather see him try something and miss than repeat himself. I'm curious, not worried.

On awards, the chatter has started. World of Reel's Jordan Ruimy wrote after the New York premiere that he doesn't expect a Best Picture nomination, while Comic Basics floated a Best Actor nomination for Pascal, which would be his first. I'd file both under early guesses. Nobody has the full picture until more critics and voters weigh in.

Here's my pre-screening scorecard. These are expectations built from reviews and interviews, not scores from watching the film.

So here's my own three-question test for deciding whether to make the trip:

1. Do you enjoy character studies where mood leads and plot follows?
2. Does a story about the people who record movie music make you curious?
3. Can you give a film 127 minutes without a ticking-clock plot?

Three yeses: go as early as you can. Two: go, just not necessarily opening night. One or none: wait. That's a rule of thumb from me, not science.

If you're planning a big-screen December, I also compared the other heavy hitter of the month in my Dune: Part Three vs. Avengers: Doomsday piece.

Behemoth! questions, answered fast

Our Read: Gustavo Henrique

There's something quietly hopeful about a big-name movie spending two hours on people who usually work out of frame. Most of us have never wondered who played the cello line under a scene we love, and I like that a film is asking us to. If Behemoth! only does that, I'll have enjoyed the idea.

I don't know yet whether the script earns it, and I'd rather say that plainly than pretend. But I'd choose a film that takes a real risk on something specific over a safe one, even if it comes out a little uneven. That's why it's one of the December releases I'm most curious about.