Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman go to (marital) war in The Roses trailer

The ex-spouses' lieutenants include Andy Samberg, Allison Janney, Ncuti Gatwa, Zoë Chao, Kate McKinnon, and more.

By Emma Keates  |  April 16, 2025 | 11:02am
Photo: Jaap Buitendijk/Searchlight Pictures
Film News The Roses
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman go to (marital) war in The Roses trailer

There were atrocities committed during the actual War of the Roses, but surely nothing as vile as shaving your foot wart into your chef wife’s food or dropping live crabs into your husband’s bath. Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman are well cast as sparring soon-to-be-ex spouses in The Roses, a lively-looking story adapted from Danny DeVito’s original 1989 film, The War Of The Roses (itself based on the novel by Warren Adler). The new film hails from director Jay Roach (Meet The Parents) and writer Tony McNamara (Poor Things).

The Roses is your classic boy marries girl, girl gets more successful than boy, boy and girl both escalate through food fights and gunshots tale. “Life seems easy for picture-perfect couple Ivy (Olivia Colman) and Theo (Benedict Cumberbatch): successful careers, a loving marriage, great kids,” the film’s official synopsis reads. “But beneath the façade of their supposed ideal life, a storm is brewing – as Theo’s career nosedives while Ivy’s own ambitions take off, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentment ignites.”

Colman and Cumberbatch have also recruited a few worthy lieutenants in Ncuti Gatwa, Kate McKinnon, Andy Samberg, Allison Janney, Zoë Chao, and more. By the end of the trailer, in this writer’s opinion, it sort of seems like the couple has gone so off the rails, they’ve almost boomeranged around to being perfect for each other again. (Their therapist disagrees.)

We’ll see if it works out for these crazy kids when The Roses premieres August 29 in theaters.  

 
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