After breaking out with James Cameron‘s Avatar, Sam Worthington has been in his fair share of Hollywood projects from the new Clash of the Titans films to a few duds like Man on a Ledge and Texas Killing Fields, but now the actor has returned to his homeland for the first time since taking a trip to Pandora. Titled Drift, Worthington stars in the Australian surfing drama and we’ve got the first trailer today.
Directed by Morgan O’Neill and Ben Nott (with the former last helming John Cusack‘s The Factory, which still has yet to get a US release), the film follows brothers from 1970s who attempt for surfing glory but get involved in some shady operations. The trailer paints a fairly standard drama, but off the bat, it looks better than our recent offerings in the genre such as Soul Surfer and Chasing Mavericks. Check it out below thanks to Twitch.
Synopsis:
Australia, 1970s. The Kelly brothers, Andy and Jimmy, have one great passion: riding big waves. As kids, their mother escaped from Sydney to Margaret River, a sleepy coastal town with some of the world’s most challenging and dangerous waves. For the next 12 years, the boys perfected their surfing skills, always searching for the perfect ride. Free-spirited Jimmy is a gifted surfer and innovator but he starts to slip toward a life of crime to help the family out of debt. Andy makes a big decision.
Quitting a stable job, he bets on Jimmy’s surf inventions and his own business skills and launches a backyard surf gear business. They rethink board design, craft homemade wetsuits and sell their merchandise out of their van. Encouraged by their new friends, travelling bohemian surf photographer and filmmaker JB (Sam Worthington) and his gorgeous Hawaiian surfer companion, Lani, who stirs the two brothers’ hearts, they start to seek ways to expand. After they get mixed up with a local drug dealer, it looks like everything they built up, will be ruined…
Set in breathtaking locations and inspired by the true story of Australia’s legendary surfwear moguls, the film chronicles the rise of surf brands and the expansion of the laidback surf attitude as a global lifestyle. A story of passion and corruption, friendship and loyalty, deadly addictions and fractured relationships, DRIFT tells a tale of courage and the will to survive against all odds.
Drift will hit theaters next year.