Austin and Jodie hit the road

The Bikeriders comes out in a month, and as I said yesterday, Focus Features is hoping this will be a summer sleeper, a bit of adult-oriented counterprogramming to the summer tentpoles. We’ll see! For now, Austin Butler and Jodie Comer have started their press tour, alongside director Jeff Nichols. Not pictured: Tom Hardy.

Austin, Jodie, and Jeff were on The Jess Cagle Show yesterday, and the day before, Austin did a promo event at Los Angeles’s Bike Shed. My inner snark wanted to dunk on this as an Elvis-style stunt—he can’t stop riding bikes!—except Focus has been hosting promo events at the Bike Shed all year, I know because they keep inviting me to them. Also, I am pretty sure the entire point of this appearance is to show that yes, Sensitive Artist Austin Butler knows how to ride a motorcycle for real. 

Austin and Jodie were also the honorary starters at the Indy 500 last weekend, which kind of makes sense in that motorcycles and cars both have wheels. And where is Tom Hardy in all this? Well, this is how you know he has more juice than Austin Butler and Jodie Comer. They can’t make Tom Hardy do the promo events. And everyone already knows he can ride a motorcycle.