Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri Form a High School Fight Club in Raunchy Trailer for 'Bottoms' (original) (raw)

Director Emma Seligman recently said she "felt like queer women hadn't gotten there due from a teen sex comedy"

Updated on June 6, 2023 10:26PM EDT

Note: Some language and visuals in this trailer may be NSFW.

A high school fight club. What could go wrong?

Rachel Sennott (Bodies Bodies Bodies) and Ayo Edebiri (The Bear) star in the NSFW first trailer for Bottoms, a teen comedy about two friends, PJ and Josie, who "start a fight club as a way to lose their virginities to cheerleaders."

"Their bizarre plan works," according to an official synopsis: "The fight club gains traction and soon the most popular girls in school are beating each other up in the name of self-defense. But PJ and Josie find themselves in over their heads and in need of a way out before their plan is exposed."

The cast also includes Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Gerber, Nicholas Galitzine, Dagmara Dominczyk and former NFL player Marshawn Lynch.

Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri in Bottoms (2023).

United Artists Releasing / Courtesy Everett Collection

Bottoms had its world premiere at the South By Southwest Film Festival in March. Sennott co-wrote Bottoms with director Emma Seligman, with whom she also worked on the 2020 movie Shiva Baby.

Seligman told Entertainment Weekly last month that they "felt like queer women hadn't gotten there due from a teen sex comedy."

United Artists Releasing / Courtesy Everett Collection

Added Sennott, "We said we want the girls to fight each other, we want there to be a bomb, we want them to be trying to win over the cheerleaders. We had references in our mind in terms of Scott Pilgrim, Jennifer's Body, Jawbreaker, all these different movies. But we also wanted to make sure we weren't [just] doing one and that it was a mashup of genres."

"It's a campy high school movie, but it's also an action movie," she added.

Sennott teased the project to W Magazine in January, saying it was "really fun and wild and so different from Shiva Baby."

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Courtesy of Orion Pictures

"In Shiva Baby, we’re basically in a house with a lot of older actors. This movie, we’re on a football field. We’re in a house. We’re in a yard. We’re driving around. We’re doing stunts. Everyone is, like, 20 years old, and the energy was like 'Aah!' " she added.

"I star in it with my friend Ayo Edebiri. We did things together when we were still in college. So to get to go back into our little improv dynamic was so fun."

Bottoms is in select theaters Aug. 25.