Ben Affleck, Ana de Armas’ too-hot-for-theaters thriller Deep Water gets trailer, Hulu release date

2022 will gift fans of sexually tinged dramas two major releases: Blonde, Netflix’s supposedly NC-17 Marilyn Monroe biopic directed by The Assassination of Jesse James’ Andrew Dominick and starring Ana de Armas; and Deep Water, the new erotic thriller from Adrian Lyne (9 ¹⁄₂ Weeks, Fatal Attraction) starring Ben Affleck and somehow also Ana de Armas. While the the fate of Blonde remains unknown (though Netflix promised a release this year in its big 2022 preview), this Valentine’s Day brings the good news that Deep Water is going to steam — er, stream — on Hulu this March.

A new teaser trailer arrived on Monday, introducing us to de Armas and Affleck’s brand of lust-filled stares. At around one minute of footage, it’s the ultimate tease for a much-discussed, never-seen film. The pair of actors joined Fox’s Deep Water in August 2019, and the excitement was immediate: Lyne had not made a film since 2002’s Unfaithful, and now he had two gorgeous movie stars ready to play R-rated ball in a Patricia Highsmith adaptation written by Euphoria creator Sam Levinson. Then, during production, Affleck and de Armas became entangled romantically, adding to the intrigue and fire. Then the pandemic hit, Affleck and de Armas broke up, the release date cratered, and a strange little movie with a ton of promise became lost in the blur of a new world order.

The Disney-Fox acquisition made the potential release of Deep Water all the more difficult to imagine. Where did the movie belong in the conglomerate’s IP-forward strategy? Apparently on Hulu; in December 2021, the company finally announced intentions to find a place for the film on the more adult-friendly streaming service.

Based on the official synopsis, Lyne’s film promises to “take us inside the marriage of picture-perfect Vic (Affleck) and Melinda (de Armas) Van Allen to discover the dangerous mind games they play and what happens to the people that get caught up in them.”

Personally, I can’t wait to be one of the people caught up in them. Deep Water hits Hulu on March 18.