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Idris Elba takes on a killer lion in new trailer for Beast

It looks like Jurassic World: Dominion won’t be Universal Pictures’ only summer film that features killer animals. In the first trailer for Beast, Idris Elba’s Dr. Nate Daniels comes face-to-face with a murderous lion. And this big cat simply won’t be placated, even though neither Nate nor his family have ever done anything to provoke it.

The trailer also introduces Sharlto Copley’s Martin Battles, a good friend of the Daniels family. Nate took his teenage girls back to South Africa in an attempt to emotionally reconnect to them after their mother’s death. Unfortunately, the Daniels family and Martin soon find themselves fighting for their lives. Not even hiding in a car can protect them from this bloodthirsty lion. But the king of the jungle has good reasons to hate all humans. Unfortunately, that means it’s kill or be killed if Nate and his family hope to survive.

Beast | Official Trailer

Here’s the official synopsis, courtesy of Universal Pictures:

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“Sometimes the rustle in the bushes actually is a monster.

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Idris Elba stars in a pulse-pounding new thriller about a father and his two teenage daughters who find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the savannah has but one apex predator.

Elba plays Dr. Nate Daniels, a recently widowed husband who returns to South Africa, where he first met his wife, on a long-planned trip with their daughters to a game reserve managed by Martin Battles (Sharlto Copley), an old family friend and wildlife biologist. But what begins as a journey of healing jolts into a fearsome fight for survival when a lion, a survivor of bloodthirsty poachers who now sees all humans as the enemy, begins stalking them.”

Idris Elba in Beast.
Universal Pictures

Iyana Halley co-stars as Nates’s 18-year-old daughter, Meredith, with Leah Sava Jeffries as her younger sister, Norah.

Baltasar Kormákur directed Beast from a script by Ryan Engle based upon an original story by Jaime Primak Sullivan. Beast will hit theaters on Friday, August 19.

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