I, Object: Andrew Niccol and the Comfort of Objects

I, Object, written and directed by Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, S1m0ne, Lord of War), will arrive in New Zealand cinemas on July 23, 2026. Niccol stages a story built around pareidolia, the mechanism through which we recognize familiar shapes where there are none, turning it into a story about grief.

“My hope is that people enjoy the ride, but also maybe that they catch what I’ve caught, which is this kind of disease of seeing faces in objects. But I got a warning for you. Once you start seeing them, you can’t stop.”

I, Object: the trailer for Andrew Niccol’s new film

The protagonist is Tom, a ten-year-old boy overwhelmed by the sudden death of his father.

Unable to establish any real connection with the people around him, he retreats into the world he already knew with his parent: the world of everyday objects, which in the trailer take on faces, voices and presence. A clock, a can, a grater, even an old Cadillac: everything can become an interlocutor, a memory, an emotional crutch.

Niccol brings with him his obsession with the boundary between constructed reality and lived reality, which in I, Object passes through the pain of a child who begins to see faces everywhere because the human world has become too hard to look at directly.

Between New Zealand and Canada: cast, production and release

On the production side, I, Object is a New Zealand-Canada co-production, conceived as a hybrid between live action and photorealistic animation. Andrew Niccol is also among the producers, alongside Timothy White, Polly Fryer, Daniel Bekerman, Chris Yurkovich and Alex Ordanis.

The technical side confirms the structure of an international independent production: cinematography is by Dave Garbett and Justin Black, editing by Christopher Donaldson, and music by Ryan Shore. The cast includes Karl Urban, Anna Faris, Jemaine Clement, Ethan Hawke, Skywalker Hughes and Bentley Storteboom, with a clear balance between New Zealand faces, Hollywood names and young performers.

New Zealand distribution is handled by Umbrella Entertainment, which will bring the film to local cinemas from July 23, 2026. Release dates for the U.S. and European markets, are still being finalized.