The BFI Patrons' Gala at the 70th London Film Festival is the international premiere of Tony Gilroy's Behemoth!, with Pedro Pascal and Olivia Wilde, at the Royal Festival Hall on 13 October 2026.
Tony Gilroy was born in New York in 1956 and spent two decades as one of the most reliable screenwriters in American cinema before directing anything. He wrote the first three Bourne films, then wrote and directed Michael Clayton in 2007, which brought him Academy Award nominations for both direction and original screenplay, and Duplicity two years later. He co-wrote Rogue One and then created Andor, which is where a new audience found him a decade later, and Behemoth! is his first feature as director since 2012.
The film is a portrait of a cello prodigy who has spent his adult life changing orchestra chairs and lovers’ beds, and who retreats to a Los Angeles scoring studio to escape his latest affair. Pedro Pascal plays him, with Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor and Will Arnett, and Gilroy directs from his own screenplay. The subject is the one his scripts keep returning to, a competent man who has run out of places to be competent in.
The international premiere is at the Royal Festival Hall on Tuesday 13 October 2026 at 6pm, as the BFI Patrons’ Gala. It runs 127 minutes, with a repeat in the same hall the next morning. A third screening follows at Vue West End on Friday 16 October, and Searchlight Pictures releases it in Britain after the Festival.