Usually, when we watch Alex Honnold on the big screen, our main concern is: will he fall off this time? After all, the climbing legend carved out a name for himself in the climbing history books by free soloing El Capitan, a 3,000ft rock face in Yosemite, without protection. For his next project, we don't have to worry about his climbing skills – but his acting skills might be another question.
Honnold has a rare scripted role in the upcoming Hollywood movie The Sound, a climbing-based thriller directed by Brendan Devane.
Honnold will be playing himself in the film, which tells the fictional tale of a group of "world class" rock climbers whose expedition on the mysterious Forbidden Wall turns into "a harrowing battle for survival hundreds of feet above the ground" when they meet with a harrowing force.
The trailer, which you can watch below, shows Honnold clad in his trademark The North Face fleece and reveals he has at least one line, though it's not yet known how much screen time the climber gets and whether he actually needs his usual La Sportiva TC Pros for any of the action.
Climbers Hazel Findlay and Brette Harrington (The Alpinist) are also listed as cast members playing themselves on IMDb, but there's no sign of Adrian Ballinger, who was reportedly signed up for the film back in 2023, according to an article in Deadline.
Thanks to climbing documentaries like Free Solo, Valley Uprising and his recent venture The Devil's Climb, Honnold is no stranger to the big screen, but a scripted adventure is certainly a departure for the climber, who's been better known is recent years for thoring himself behind environmental initiatives and working with the Honnold Foundation to advance solar vance energy access all over the world.
Initial feedback to the trailer is skepitcal at best, with one commenter writing: "how can this simultaneously look so amazing yet so terrible?" Devane's previous outdoor thriller, The Canyonlands, about a Utah rafting trip gone wrong, received an almost impressive one-star rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But let's be honest, none of that is likely to stop us from watching this when it comes out on June 27.
