Chase Stokes Plays a Sexy Tattoo Artist in Trailer for Marked Men, from Director of The Notebook (Exclusive)

Chase Stokes plays an emotionally unavailable tattoo artist who succumbs to a whirlwind relationship in the trailer for his next movie.

Voltage Pictures shared the trailer for its adaptation of author Jay Crownover’s 2012 novel Rule, Marked Men: Rule + Shaw, exclusively with PEOPLE. In the film, Stokes’ character Rule and his childhood friend Shaw (Sydney Taylor) struggle to navigate long-held feelings for each other even as he insists he does not want a relationship.

The movie’s trailer depicts Rule as an attractive and charismatic tattoo artist who is deadly serious about his work. Shaw, meanwhile, watches him spend time with other women and confesses to a friend that she fears he will never look at her romantically. After Shaw takes a leap of faith and seduces Rule, the two attempt to navigate a romantic relationship, with significant drama along the way.

“Shaw, a pre-med student, has loved Rule, a rebellious tattoo artist, for years, though he’s only ever seen her as a family friend,” reads an official synopsis for the upcoming movie. “After one uninhibited night, they’re forced to confront buried feelings while navigating grief, family expectations, and fear of commitment—testing whether love between two people from such different worlds can truly survive.”

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Marked Men: Rule + Shaw is directed by Nick Cassavetes, an actor and filmmaker perhaps best known for directing Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams’ iconic 2004 romance The Notebook. Cassavetes, 65, last directed a movie with 2023’s God Is a Bullet. Screenwriter Sharon Soboil adapted author Crownover’s novel for the screen.

Stokes, 32, leads the movie fresh off the fourth season of his Netflix series Outer Banks and a role in the movie Uglies. Taylor, meanwhile, previously appeared in Disney+’s 2023 series American Born Chinese. The pair costar alongside Alexander Ludwig, Ella Balinska, Evan Mock, Matthew Noszka, and Natalie Alyn Lind.

Marked Men: Rule + Shaw is in theaters Jan. 22 and Jan. 23, 2025.