Focus World announced yesterday they’d picked up David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars for domestic distribution with the intention of releasing it in 2015. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival to somewhat mixed reviews, though specific attention was garnered for Julianne Moore who took home the fest’s Best Actress award.
It will next screen at the Toronto Film Festival followed by a New York Film Festival presentation. Naturally, when I first heard the news Focus World would give it a 2015 release I assumed that would come with a limited awards run in late 2014 along with a campaign for, at the very least, Moore, an actress long-thought overdue for an Oscar win, but it seems that might not be the case.
Variety spoke with an individual that says an awards run “could” happen, but perhaps the buzz surrounding what is said to be a bit of a non-Academy character is scaring Focus off. I will finally see the film in Toronto, but from what I’ve heard it is quite a raw and exposed performance including a bathroom scene not typically seen in feature films.
By the end of September the film will have been already released in France, Italy, Germany, the UK and more with Australia getting it in October.
Along with Moore, the film stars Robert Pattinson, John Cusack, Sarah Gadon, Mia Wasikowska and Olivia Williams. Here’s the plot followed by a previous trailer for the movie.
A contemporary tale exploring the demons of our celebrity-obsessed society, story follows the Weiss family, which is led by Stafford (Cusack), a psychotherapist and life coach who made his fortune with self-help books. His wife (Williams) is the overbearing mother-manager of their 13-year-old son (Evan Bird), a TV star recently out of drug rehab. Their estranged daughter (Wasikowska) has just been released from a psychiatric hospital and befriended a limo driver (Pattinson) who is also an aspiring actor.
One of Stafford’s celebrity clients is Havana (Moore), an actress with an unusual new assistant. Havana’s dream of reprising her dead mother’s (Gadon) starring role from the 1960s slowly crumbles while ghosts, death and all manner of vices collide.
[sb id=”927587″ height=”281″ width=”500″]
