Chef Anthony Bourdain had a singular personality, and a generation of TV viewers grew into a culture of foodies inspired by his utterings, along with the likes of Guy Fieri, Bobby Flay, Cat Cora, Alton Brown, Masaharu Morimoto, and others as the Food Network became required viewing.  You can see a similar glint in his eye and reserved smile on actor Dominic Sessa in the first trailer for Tony, a coming-of-age biopic where movie audiences will meet Bourdain at age 19, working for a Brazilian chef.  Sessa had the right look for the 1970s The Holdovers, and looks to effortlessly slip into the past, co-starring with Zooey Deschanel ringer Emilia Jones (Doctor Who, The Running Man, CODA) and Antonio Banderas delivering the street cred as his boss.  A generation after Julia Child, he informed us no chef serves an entree that isn’t made with at least an entire stick of butter.

You can’t help but try to find the real Bourdain’s calm, chastising, yet always sub-joy banter as you watch and listen to the dialogue, co-written by director Matt Johnson, who directed the brilliant 1990s “period biopic” BlackBerry (reviewed here).  How can this go wrong?  It looks great.  The real Bourdain filled a void for many in the way of Bob Ross and Steve Irwin, but with a darker fate.  Check out this trailer for Tony:

What promises to be a love letter to the late, beloved celebrity chef, with Rich Sommer (BlackBerry, The Dropout, Burn Notice), Dagmara Dominczyk (24, Black Rabbit), and Stavros Halkias (The Comeback King), Tony arrives in theaters August 7, 2026.

C.J. Bunce / Editor / borg