The Outfit Trailer: Mark Rylance Gets Mixed Up With Chicago Gangsters In A Tailor Shop

You've seen Mark Rylance walk across a "Bridge of Spies" for Steven Spielberg — and win an Academy Award for it. Now, he's setting up shop as a tailor in "The Outfit."

Produced by FilmNation Entertainment and distributed by Focus Features, "The Outfit" marks the directorial debut of Graham Moore, whose script for "The Imitation Game" made the Black List of best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood before becoming a Benedict Cumberbatch film and going on to win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Here, Moore is co-writing with actor Johnathan McClain.

Rylance plays a tailor named Leonard who has uprooted from London to Chicago, where his customers aren't all angels. It seems he's gotten mixed up with gangsters, the kind of sketchy characters who are liable to use his store as a drop location for envelopes in a lockbox.

In addition to being a period piece, "The Outfit" looks to be one of those pressure-cooker single-location movies where the action is all confined to one setting. The title has a double meaning; it refers to both the outfits Leonard sews and the "network of every big-time crew from Santa Monica to Coney Island."

Check out the trailer for "The Outfit" below.

"What else does a man need besides his shears?" Well, if he's a screenwriter, he needs a good story. FilmNation CEO Glen Basner appears to recognize that; when news of "The Outfit" first broke, he told Deadline, "A truly great film starts with fantastic writing, and we're thrilled to have Graham's talent drive this film to its full potential as a highly entertaining crime drama,."

In the trailer for "The Outfit," Leonard says, "This isn't art. It's a craft. You cannot make something good until you understand the custom." Again, those words could probably also apply to a screenwriter and now director of Moore's caliber, looking to understand genre customs or conventions before applying the same rules (or subverting them) in historical dramas like "The Imitation Game" and thrillers like "The Outfit."

Here's the official synopsis for "The Outfit" from Focus Features:

From the Academy Award-winning writer of The Imitation Game (Graham Moore) comes The Outfit, a gripping and masterful thriller in which an expert tailor (Academy Award winner Mark Rylance) must outwit a dangerous group of mobsters in order to survive a fateful night.

"The Outfit" co-stars Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O'Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Simon Russell Beale. It's produced by Scoop Wasserstein, Ben Browning, and Amy Jackson, and will make its debut exclusively in theaters on February 25, 2022.