Netflix released a new trailer for Sacrifice on September 16. Chris Evans stars as Mike Tyler, an action-movie celebrity trying to recover from a very public career crisis by re-entering elite society at an environmental charity gala.

The event is hosted by billionaire Ben Bracken, played by Vincent Cassel, and his wife Gloria, played by Salma Hayek Pinault. It is packed with celebrities, money and carefully staged concern for the planet.

Then Joan arrives.

Anya Taylor-Joy has a much more literal plan to save the world

Joan leads a group that believes an extinction-level event will occur in three days unless three people are sacrificed to a nearby volcano. Mike quickly finds himself among the potential offerings.

That gives Gavras a very direct comic reversal. Evans is playing a man whose public identity is built around fictional heroism, only to discover that real sacrifice is considerably less appealing when he is the one being volunteered.

Gavras co-wrote the film with Will Arbery. Their influences range from Greek mythology and Joan of Arc to The Lord of the Rings, a comparison Gavras himself makes when describing a group traveling toward a volcano with something very important to throw inside it.

The target is celebrity culture as much as apocalypse

Sacrifice uses its doomsday premise to attack the performance surrounding wealth, activism and public virtue. Mike wants his comeback. The gala guests want to be seen caring. Joan and her followers arrive with a belief system that is absurdly extreme but completely sincere.

Taylor-Joy has described the story in terms of individual effort versus collective action and the ease with which serious issues are repackaged as entertainment. Gavras describes the experience more simply as a roller coaster designed to keep changing direction.

The ensemble adds to that deliberately overloaded quality. Ambika Mod, Sam Richardson, Yung Lean, Jade Croot, Miriam Silverman and John Malkovich appear alongside Evans, Taylor-Joy, Cassel and Hayek. Charli XCX has a smaller role as Mother Nature.

Gavras took the cast to actual mountains and mines

The production filmed on location in Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland rather than building its entire apocalypse indoors. Gavras says roughly 200 extras in gala clothing were brought into a working mine in northern Greece for the event sequences.

Other scenes required the cast and crew to climb for close to an hour toward an active volcano, with equipment carried in part by donkeys. It is a conspicuously physical approach for a film built around people whose public lives are otherwise highly manufactured.

The TIFF title finally reaches Netflix in October

Sacrifice first screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2025. Netflix now lists the film at roughly 100 minutes, considerably leaner than its premise might suggest.

It begins streaming in the United States and France on October 16, 2026.