With summer blockbuster season over and the festival/awards circuit in full swing, the movies the pundits think might be in with a chance at gong glory are jockeying for attention. Here comes a new trailer for one of the prestige contenders, thesp-heavy theatre adaptation August: Osage County.
Directed by The Company Men’s John Wells and adapted from her own Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tracy Letts, it finds the strong-willed women of the Weston family (includingJulia Roberts, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson) drawn back to the Midwest home where they were raised in order to deal with a crisis.
Trouble is, the Oklahoma house run by matriarch Violet (Meryl Streep) wasn’t the most enjoyable – or the sanest – place to grow up, and as the various children’s lives diverged so the rifts and tensions have grown over the years. We predict fireworks.
The cast is full of reliable performers, including Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Margo Martindale, Ewan McGregor, Dermot Mulroney, Sam Shepard and Benedict Cumberbatch. The Argo team of George Clooney and Grant Heslov produced. Expect this one to be in the awards conversation at the very least.
**August: Osage County **arrives here for a limited release on December 26 before expanding wider on January 17.