Joel Edgerton coaches a team of underdog rowers in The Boys in the Boat trailer

When money, food and shelter were scarce, joining a rowing team was a matter of life and death. That’s the hook of George Clooney’s latest directorial effort, The Boys in the Boat.

Based on the non-fiction novel by Daniel James Brown, the film tells the story of the 1936 University of Washington rowing team that competed in the Summer Olympics in Berlin. The trailer hits all the clichés of an underdog sports team, although the clichés become the same for a reason. The film looks superbly directed and impeccably acted by actors like Joel Edgerton and Callum Turner.

This is Clooney’s first directorial effort since 2021’s The Tender Bar, starring Ben Affleck. It’s certainly a sign of the times, as Clooney hasn’t directed a feature film for a theatrically-oriented studio since Rubicon for Paramount in late 2017.

To be fair, Amazon and MGM Studios will provide a theatrical release for this Spyglass/Smokehouse movie starting on Christmas Day. However, tech companies with deep pockets and streaming aspirations could be a key component of the future for these kinds of non-franchise studio programmers.

Written by Mark L. Smith, The Boys in the Boat is produced by Clooney and his longtime professional partner Grant Heslov. Kevin Ulrich, Barbare A. Hall, Gary Barber and Peter Oylataguerre serve as executive producers.

For its Christmas special, The Boys in the Boat will take on (or ideally co-star with) the likes of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Illumination’s The Migration, Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White’s wrestling melodrama. Iron Claw, Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney’s rom-com Anybody But You, and the Oprah Winfrey-produced stage adaptation of The Color Purple. Barring a strike-related release date change, this will be the first truly busy holiday season since 2019.