A 'Caught Stealing' appreciation post.

The new film, 'Caught Stealing' stars iconic duo Austin Butler and Zoë Kravitz in the thrilling and grimly hilarious story of a man who is just trying to take care of a cat as his life goes off the rails. 

"Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) is a former high-school baseball phenom turned present-day burnt-out bartender living in downtown NYC. He may not be a sports star, but life is still pretty good; he's got a great girl (Zoë Kravitz), and his favourite team is making an underdog run at the pennant.

When his punk-rock neighbour Russ (Matt Smith) asks him to take care of his cat for a few days, Hank finds himself caught in the middle of a motley crew of pissed-off gangsters. Hank doesn’t know what they want or why he’s the target; the only thing that’s clear is that he’ll have to use all his hustle to stay alive long enough to find out…"

'Caught Stealing' will be released in New Zealand cinemas on 28th of August. 

#1. The film stars leads, Austin Butler and Zoë Kravitz - Butler portrays Hank Thompson and Kravitz portrays Yvonne an EMT who challenges Hank to get his life back on track.

#2. Austin Butler and Darron Aronofsky were spotted on stage at Bad Bunny's Puerto Rico concert in some very iconic videos. Bad Bunny also stars in the film alongside Butler and Kravitz. 

Butler has shared that his favourite Bad Bunny song is 'NUEVAYoL'. 

#3. 'Caught Stealing' is directed by Darren Aronofsky - who has previously directed, 'Black Swan', 'The Whale', 'Mother!', and more.

He shares on his reason for making a film that is a slight difference change of pace for him: “I really wanted to make a movie that was first and foremost fun—a movie that for two hours would fully distract and hold your attention, and while you’re at the theater, you have a great time. There’s so much distraction in the world, so to get people to come and see a movie and have a great time felt like the most valuable thing I could work on right now.”

#4. The real-life street cat Tonic stars as Bud - who is at the core of all the misfortunes that befall Hank in the film. The lead cat trainer on the film, Melissa Millett shares: “Tonic is just an incredible cat. It’s a crazy storyline where Hank and his cat are on the run in New York and all these crazy things happen, so we needed a really strong cat. Tonic’s a live show cat, so he’s used to all the chaos. He's seen planes take off in front of him when we performed at an air show. Monster truck races, drag races, tractor races, a lot of noise, a lot of chaos. And so, it felt like he was the right cat for this role. We also had five doubles for Tonic, so six cats shared the role, but Tonic loves to work so much, he did 90% of it.”

Austin became good friends with the cat - Millet shares: "There’s a scene where he had to yell at him, and they’d call cut, and Austin would be like ‘Give me some treats. I have to feed him because I don’t want him to think we’re not friends.'"

#5. The band Idles contributed to the film's original songs - when Aronofsky sent the screenplay to the band's Joe Talbot, he immediately started writing songs.

Director Aronofsky shares on why he chose Idles to be a part of his film: "The first time I went on Jimmy Fallon, they were the performing band, just by coincidence. We met and became friends and started talking. And when I started thinking about this script, I realized, wow, they could totally fit the aesthetic of the movie. How great it would be if Idles were the house band for 'Caught Stealing'."

Listen to the track 'Rabbit Run' by Idles from the film below...

'Caught Stealing' will be released in New Zealand cinemas on 28th of August. 

Watch the trailer below...