Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska recently screened for press at the New York Film Festival and the response seemed far more ecstatic than what I experienced when the film premiered in Cannes, which certainly helps its Oscar chances as we approach the November 15 release date, though if you read my review you’ll see I wasn’t entirely impressed.
Payne, however, has more than an awards race on his mind as he has reportedly set his eye on his next film, which is setting up quickly at Fox Searchlight. With this news it’s quite clear Payne is no longer interested in lengthy times away from set as was the case with the seven years between Sideways and 2011’s The Descendants (no, I don’t count Paris, je t’aime or “Hung”).
Titled The Judge’s Will, the film is based on Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s New Yorker article (read it in full right here) telling the final moments in the chess game relationship between an ailing Delhi judge and his beautiful younger Bombay wife. Each has separate lives even though they live under the same roof and as he nears death, the judge wants to be sure that his even younger, barely educated mistress is cared for and not cast out.
The story was Jhabvala’s final one for the New Yorker before she passed away.
