STONEWALL Trailer: Wait, This is a Roland Emmerich Movie?

Independence Day. The Day After Tomorrow. 2012. 10,000 BC. These films, all from director Roland Emmerich, look wildly different than the trailer for his newest movie, Stonewall, which shines a light on the origins of the Gay Rights Movement in New York City in the late 1960s. The film's first trailer has just arrived, and it couldn't be farther from the explosion-filled, world-ending "disaster porn" that litters most of Emmerich's filmography.

This is the second time Emmerich has made a dramatic shift in his career. 2011's Anonymous is a small scale period piece about whether Shakespeare's plays were actually written by The Bard or by someone else, and while the movie is a little ridiculous at times, I mostly enjoyed his attempt at scaling back from the massive films he's known for. This looks like a similar kind of move for him, and since he's apparently openly gay, it looks like a passion project worth checking out.

Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) stars, and Stonewall arrives in theaters on September 25th:

STONEWALL is a drama about a fictional young man caught up during the 1969 Stonewall Riots. Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine) is forced to leave behind friends and loved ones when he is kicked out of his parent’s home and flees to New York. Alone in Greenwich Village, homeless and destitute, he befriends a group of street kids who soon introduce him to the local watering hole The Stonewall Inn; however, this shady, mafia-run club is far from a safe-haven. As Danny and his friends experience discrimination, endure atrocities and are repeatedly harassed by the police, we see a rage begin to build. This emotion runs through Danny and the entire community of young gays, lesbians and drag queens who populate the Stonewall Inn and erupts in a storm of anger. With the toss of a single brick, a riot ensues and a crusade for equality is born.