I can’t lie, I expected something more from the Toronto Film Festival when they didn’t announce an opening night film with their lineup earlier this week. Now it turns out they announced the film, just not the fact it was going to serve as the opener, which easily leads us to believe they were hoping for something else but didn’t get it.
Announced just this morning, David Dobkin‘s The Judge starring Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall will serve as the fest’s opening night film. In the film Downey plays big city lawyer Hank Palmer who returns to his childhood home where his estranged father, the town’s judge (Duvall), is suspected of murder. He sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before. Vera Farmiga, Vincent D’Onofrio, Dax Shepard, Leighton Meester, Melissa Leo, Billy Bob Thornton, Balthazar Getty, David Krumholtz, Grace Zabriskie and Denis O’Hare co-star.
It’s a rather disappointing announcement since I expected a new movie to be announced, and we can only speculate as to what they may have been holding out for, but didn’t ultimately get. I must say, however, if they passed on something bigger only because they wouldn’t have had the world premiere, that’s even more disappointing.
Oh well, no telling now. You can check out the trailer and poster for The Judge below, the film hits theaters on October 10, and you can check out the full TIFF 2014 lineup right here as I’ll be updating it as more films are announced, and there are a lot more to be announced.
