Ryder, Yelchin Star in Experimenter, with Kellan Lutz as William Shatner

What do Winona Ryder, Anton Yelchin, William Shatner and Kellan Lutz all have in common? They all figure prominently in the upcoming film drama Experimenter. Ryder, who played Spock's mother Amanda in Star Trek (2009), and Yelchin, who portrays the current version of Chekov in the latest Star Trek big-screen adventures, co-star in the Experimenter. Meanwhile, Lutz makes a cameo appearance as... William Shatner. Shatner, in real life starred in The Tenth Level, a 1976 made-for-television movie based on the central events depicted in Experimenter. He played Stanley Milgram, the central character in Experimenter, who's portrayed by Peter Sarsgaard in the new film. And here's just a bit more trivia, The Tenth Level also featured one of the very first performances by Stephen Macht, who many years later played General Krim in two episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Below, check out photos from Experimenter, as well as the trailer and synopsis.

Winona Ryder

Anton Yelchin

Kellan Lutz

Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram (Peter Sarsgaard) designs a psychology experiment in which people think they’re delivering electric shocks to an affable stranger (Jim Gaffigan) strapped into a chair in another room. Subjects are told it’s about memory, but the experiment is really about conformity, conscience, and free will. Milgram is trying to come to terms with the Holocaust and to test people’s tendency to comply with authority.Milgram meets Sasha (Winona Ryder), a former dancer living in New York. Their courtship includes a visit to the Yale lab, where Milgram’s experiment has yielded disturbing results: 65 per cent of Milgram’s subjects deliver shocks that may be fatal, obeying polite commands from a lab-coated authority figure (John Palladino). (Actors portraying subjects include Anthony Edwards, Taryn Manning, John Leguizamo, Anton Yelchin and Danny Abeckaser.)Milgram is working at Harvard when his obedience findings are reported in The New York Times. He is accused of being deceptive, a manipulative monster. Sasha – now Mrs. Milgram – fortifies his sense of empathy and ethics, as does his colleague Paul Hollander (Edoardo Ballerini). At Harvard, Milgram undertakes now-classic research into human behavior, including the “lost letter” technique for assessing public opinion, and the Small World social networking experiment, the basis for “six degrees of separation.” But the obedience experiments threaten to overshadow all else. When Milgram barges into a classroom to announce that President Kennedy has been shot, students don’t believe him – his reputation for deception has eclipsed his credibility.Milgram fails to get tenure at Harvard, but he moves on, accepting a professorship at the City University of New York, where he guides graduate students, treating the streets as a vast experimental laboratory. All the same, he’s compelled to return to his obedience work, re-igniting debate with his book, Obedience to Authority, an Experimental View, published in 1974. Milgram goes on the talk-show circuit, and sees his experiments distorted in The Tenth Level, a made-for-TV movie starring William Shatner (Kellan Lutz) and Ossie Davis (Dennis Haysbert).Although Milgram’s life is cut short by a heart condition, EXPERIMENTER’s tone is celebratory, and as playful and provocative as a Milgram experiment. A bold use of voice-over and rear-screen projections mirrors Milgram’s inner life and reflects his insights into human behavior, social structures, the interplay of reality and illusion. What would you do? is an underlying question in major Milgram research. EXPERIMENTER aims to show how Milgram’s conscience and creative spirit continue to be resonant, poignant, and inspirational.Experimenter will open in theaters on October 16.---

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