Vertical has released a new trailer for Eden, a survival thriller directed by Ron Howard that features an ensemble cast with several Marvel and John Wick universe actors. The film stars Jude Law (Captain Marvel), Vanessa Kirby (soon to be Sue Storm in The Fantastic Four), Sydney Sweeney (Madame Web), and Daniel Brühl (Captain America: Civil War), alongside Ana de Armas, who recently starred in the spinoff From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Based on a true story, the film follows a group of people who attempt to establish a new society on a remote island, only for their efforts to descend into a violent conflict.
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The new trailer for Eden quickly establishes the movie’s central concept. The footage shows a group of people making the momentous decision to leave civilization behind entirely, setting out to found a new, independent colony in the untamed wilderness. The trailer then illustrates how their profound isolation from the outside world begins to affect them, showing how the initial hope of their project gives way to a growing sense of distrust among the members of the small community. This tension is depicted as escalating to a dangerous breaking point, with scenes showing the characters threatening each other’s lives, turning their isolated paradise into a battleground.
Eden‘s cast includes Law as the group’s philosophical leader, Dr. Friedrich Ritter, and Kirby as his partner, Dora Strauch. They are joined by Sweeney and Brühl as the Wittmer couple, a more pragmatic family of settlers. The primary catalyst for the community’s conflict is the arrival of a disruptive and flamboyant woman who calls herself a Baroness, played by de Armas. The project is guided by director Howard, who has an extensive history of dramatizing real-life events. He previously won Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture for A Beautiful Mind and has also directed other acclaimed films based on true stories, such as Apollo 13 and Rush.
Eden Is Based on a Bizarre Unsolved Mystery
The events of Eden are based on a strange true story that has puzzled historians for decades, widely known as “The Galapagos Affair.” The story has been explored before, most notably in the 2013 feature-length documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden. That film used archival footage and voice actors like Cate Blanchett and Diane Kruger to read from the settlers’ actual diaries, highlighting the rich source material that Eden is now adapting into a narrative feature.
The true story unfolded on Floreana, one of the Galapagos Islands, in the 1930s. It began in 1929 when a German doctor and philosopher named Friedrich Ritter and his companion, Dore Strauch, moved to the uninhabited island to escape what they saw as the moral decay of bourgeois society. Their isolated existence was soon interrupted by the arrival of another German family, Heinz and Margret Wittmer, settlers focused on building a functional homestead.
Their delicate balance was then completely destroyed with the arrival of an eccentric Austrian woman who called herself Baroness Eloise von Wagner Wehrhorn. She arrived with her two young German lovers, Robert Phillipson and Rudolf Lorenz, and an Ecuadorian servant. The Baroness was the complete opposite of the other settlers, having grandiose plans to build a luxury hotel on the island, which she named “Hacienda Paradiso.” She was manipulative and domineering, and her relationships with her two lovers were reportedly volatile. She intercepted the mail of the other settlers and declared herself the empress of Floreana, leading to bitter rivalries and open hostility among the island’s tiny population.
The situation came to a head in 1934 when the Baroness and her lover, Phillipson, vanished without a trace. Margret Wittmer claimed the couple had told her they were leaving the island on a passing yacht bound for Tahiti, but there was no record of such a yacht ever docking. Shortly after their disappearance, the Baroness’s other lover, Lorenz, hastily left the island with a Norwegian fisherman, but their mummified bodies were later discovered shipwrecked on another desolate island. To deepen the mystery, Dr. Ritter died later that same year, seemingly from food poisoning after eating improperly preserved chicken, though his partner suspected he had been deliberately poisoned. The Wittmers were the only original settlers to survive and thrive on the island, leaving behind a legacy of suspicion and unanswered questions that persist to this day.
Eden is scheduled to be released in the United States on August 22, 2025.
Will you be watching Eden in theaters? Let us know in the comments.
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