After small roles in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and “Boy Erased,” pop singer Troye Sivan makes a substantial bid for movie stardom in “Three Months,” a new Paramount+ dramedy.
Audiences got their first look at the film, due out Feb. 23, with a new trailer this week. As seen in the clip, “Three Months” follows Caleb (played by Sivan), a young gay man in suburban Florida whose post-high school graduation plans are thrown into disarray after learning he was exposed to HIV.
Forced to wait all summer for his final test results, Caleb finds a kindred spirit in Dara (Brianne Tju), with whom he works at a convenience store. He also catches the eye of Estha (Viveik Kalra), who appears smitten with him from afar but whose anti-LGBTQ family squashes any hope of romance ― for now, at least.
Fans of Sivan’s ambient pop, showcased on 2015’s “Blue Neighbourhood” and 2018’s “Bloom,” will be thrilled to learn that the singer has performed two songs for the film’s soundtrack, too.
Catch the “Three Months” trailer below.
“Three Months” was written and directed by Jared Frieder, whose résumé includes the MTV series “Sweet/Vicious.” While the film is Frieder’s first directorial feature, he was able to secure Ellen Burstyn, Judy Greer and “Hamilton” alum Javier Muñoz in supporting roles.
In a statement, Frieder said “Three Months” was loosely based on his own experiences growing up in Florida and learning to embrace his truth as a gay man.
“At its core, it’s a film about dismantling the shame around HIV and showing that it’s no longer a death sentence in our modern world with access to health care,” he said. “It’s about a kid coming of age and realizing that the very things that make him different also make him indispensable and worthy of love. And perhaps most of all, it’s about what it’s like to wait.”
Now based in Los Angeles, Frieder said he’d worked on the “Three Months” screenplay for the better part of a decade. He began shooting the film in March 2020, just days before COVID-19 shut down production on countless movies and television shows around the world.
In hindsight, Frieder believes “Three Months” benefited from the unexpected downtime both in terms of performances and in offering a more relevant message.
“To say this experience was triggering would be the understatement of the century, but I decided to take a page out of Caleb’s book ― I decided to practice what this movie preaches,” he said. “The future might’ve been uncertain, but I wasn’t going to wait passively. I would fight for this film every day until we got the opportunity to finish.”