Nope Footage Reaction: Jordan Peele's New Movie Looks F***ing Sick [CinemaCon 2022]

Nobody these days is doing it like Jordan Peele. The soon-to-be three-time director is currently riding one hell of a hot streak, between the pop-culture sensation of "Get Out" and the more meditative and almost frustratingly ambiguous approach of his follow-up, "Us." With this year's upcoming release of "Nope," Peele is looking to join an exclusive group of directors who've made an unmistakable splash in Hollywood and came out swinging right out of the gate. Should his latest effort measure up even somewhat comparably to his previous two, that would prove to be an impressive run for any director at any point in their careers — let alone their first three movies ever.

With overwhelming expectations flying high for Peele's next outing, exacerbated even more by the mystifying trailer for the film, viewers are understandably champing at the bit for any and all revelations into just what's going on in "Nope." With the feature film set to release a few months from now, Peele fans have had to bide their time analyzing every frame of the released footage to this point and come up with their own theories altogether. Fortunately, today we're about to have another batch of footage to scrutinize ... though it'd be more accurate to say footage descriptions. 

With CinemaCon currently ongoing this week, Peele's "Nope" has joined the fray of other highly anticipated movies set to make their marks among those in attendance. That includes /Film's Ben Pearson, who has been relaying everything he's been lucky enough to see. No, I'm not jealous at all, why do you ask?

Here's what we saw.

The "Nope" news we've all been waiting for was kicked off by an introduction from the owner of Next Act Cinema, the first Black-owned movie theater in Baltimore (which, as a Maryland girl, is very thrilling). After a bearded Jordan Peele appeared on stage, he started things off by thanking theater owners around the world for supporting his first films, "Get Out" and "Us," and promising that he'll be cranking out original stories until "until somebody stops me or tells me I can't."

Hopefully no one will be telling him he can't anytime soon, because Peele's films are just too intriguing. With their minimalist titles and their maximalist storytelling, Peele has created a horror universe of his own. Speaking of the way he titles his movies, especially the Internet meme-esque "Nope," Peele said, "I like the titles that are in tune with what the audience is feeling," and that his movies aim to acknowledge Black audiences and make them feel heard.

The title of a Peele movie might give you a taste of what is about to happen, but there's still a lot of mystery around what exactly is going on in "Nope," and he has no interest in unshrouding those mysteries just yet, but he did admit to reading theories about the film's plot, saying "Some get kind of close, some are nonsense, some are not remotely close, and some are useful." Which sounds about right.

Of course, it wouldn't be CinemaCon if he didn't hit us with some new footage, which /Film's Ben Pearson, on the ground at the event, described to us as "f****** sick." Peele may want to keep the big reveal underwraps, but with "Nope" hovering into theaters summer of 2022, he can't keep us in the dark for too much longer. The new footage covers some scenes we've seen before, including actor Daniel Kaluuya (who is playing Keke Palmer's brother) looking frightened on a ranch in the middle of the desert, someone spookily falling off a horse, and some threatening-looking clouds. But the big reveal from the CinemaCon footage is that the movie is sponsored by Fry's! I'm kidding, but we do see footage of a Fry's tech coming to the ranch to install some security cameras, plus some glimpses of Michael Walcott serving as a grizzled security team leader (looking a bit like Quint from "Jaws"), Stephen Yuen wearing a cowboy hat, and some scenes of Palmer trying to save Kaluuya, all before we're hit with (and you may have guessed it) a giant silver spaceship!

So ... aliens. But something tells us it isn't that simple.

As Peele remarked in the beginning of his presentation, "Roller coasters aren't fun alone. Laughing isn't fun alone. Being scared isn't fun alone." And it looks like in "Nope," we're definitely not alone out there.

Jordan Peele's "Nope" is set to land in theaters on July 22, 2022.

What's a bad miracle?"

Oscar winner Jordan Peele disrupted and redefined modern horror with Get Out and then Us. Now, he reimagines the summer movie with a new pop nightmare: the expansive horror epic, "Nope." The film reunites Peele with Oscar® winner Daniel Kaluuya ("Get Out," "Judas and the Black Messiah"), who is joined by Keke Palmer ("Hustlers," "Alice") and Oscar nominee Steven Yeun ("Minari," "Okja") as residents in a lonely gulch of inland California who bear witness to an uncanny and chilling discovery.