'Total Recall' Teaser Trailer

I guess this should really be called the Total Recall Trailer Teaser Trailer, because once again this is essentially a trailer for a trailer. But at thirty seconds, this clip features enough footage to count as a standalone teaser. The full Total Recall trailer, showing off what director Len Wiseman has done with Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Bryan Cranston, will be shown during the Celtics/Heat game on ABC Sunday April 1, and will then appear on Apple in extended form.

In the meantime, check out this trailer tease below, and begin your predictions about whether Wiseman's take on the Paul Verhoeven / Arnold Schwarzenegger film will be a summer gift, or an April Fools prank.

As with the last batch of footage we saw (which has since been mostly pulled from the web) much of what's in this tease was in the Comic Con reel shown last year in Hall H. The effects are a lot more finished — some of what we saw last July had FX only in animatic form — but there are still places where the compositing looks less than finished and polished.

Total Recall opens on August 3.

Total Recall is an action thriller about reality and memory, inspired anew by the famous short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick. Welcome to Rekall, the company that can turn your dreams into real memories. For a factory worker named Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell), even though he's got a beautiful wife (Kate Beckinsale) whom he loves, the mind-trip sounds like the perfect vacation from his frustrating life – real memories of life as a super-spy might be just what he needs. But when the procedure goes horribly wrong, Quaid becomes a hunted man. Finding himself on the run from the police – controlled by Chancellor Cohaagen (Bryan Cranston) – there is no one Quaid can trust, except possibly a rebel fighter (Jessica Biel) working for the head of the underground resistance (Bill Nighy). The line between fantasy and reality gets blurred and the fate of his world hangs in the balance as Quaid discovers his true identity, his true love, and his true fate. The film is directed by Len Wiseman. The screenplay is by Kurt Wimmer and Mark Bomback and the screen story is by Ronald Shusett & Dan O'Bannon and Jon Povill. The producers are Neal H. Moritz and Toby Jaffe.