Audiences living in New York or Los Angeles itching for Crazy Heart director Scott Cooper’s latest, Out of the Furnace, have the opportunity to see the film two days before the film enters wide release.  Relativity Media, the distributor behind the film, will open the Rust Belt drama starring Christian Bale, Casey Affleck and Woody Harrelson in limited release release on December 4th, two days before it’s December 6th wide release date.

The film, a working class pot boiler which stars Bale as a good-natured steel worker who is dragged into a life of crime, had its world premiere at the recent AFI Film Festival in Hollywood and played the Rome Film Festival.  Relativity has awards hopes for the brooding drama and the early reviews of the film have highlighted the performances in the leading men, especially Bale, who also appears in David O. Russell’s upcoming American Hustle.  This marks Cooper’s second film behind the camera following the aforementioned 2009 country western lined Crazy Heart, which earned leading actor Jeff Bridges an Academy Award.  Out of the Furnace is from an original screenplay written by Cooper and Brad Ingelsby.  Willem Dafoe, Zoe Saldana, Sam Shepard and Forest Whitaker co-star.