Our first look at Kong: Skull Island has arrived, and boy does this movie look fantastic. A new behind-the-scenes video that debuted during last night’s MTV Movie Awards gives us a brief preview of the King Kong reboot, which was already promising enough given that the film has pedigree to spare. Filmmaker Jordan Vogt-Roberts, who showed promise with the unusual indie Kings of Summer, was tapped to make the leap to the big leagues with this Kong story, and he enlisted a top-notch ensemble fronted by Brie Larson and Tom Hiddleston, with Straight Outta Compton standouts Jason Mitchell and Corey Hawkins also starring alongside Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Thomas Mann, Toby Kebbell, Tom Wilkinson, and John C. Reilly.

So yeah, that cast is kind of insane, but the real treat here is that Kong: Skull Island is not your standard present-day reboot. The film actually takes place in the 70s during the Vietnam era, with Hiddleston playing a former British SAS officer and Larson playing a pacifist photojournalist as the duo lead a team that travels to the previously undiscovered titular island, where they find out that all is not what it first appears.


I was already pretty enthused about this project before this behind-the-scenes look, but the aesthetic on display here—especially the costumes—is terrific, and given that Vogt-Roberts showed a promising handle on visuals in Kings of Summer, I can’t wait to see what this all looks like in the finished product. And if that wasn’t enough, Warner Bros. has already set into motion plans to eventually cross this franchise over with the rebooted Godzilla, so we’ve got an epic monster-on-monster fight ahead of us, slated for release in 2020.

Check out the first Kong: Skull Island footage below via MTV. The film opens in theaters on March 10, 2017.

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.

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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Warner Bros.