It sounds like an easy sell: Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle co-stars Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper play husband and wife in a Depression-era drama directed by an Academy Award-winning director (although it’s Suzanne Bier, not David O. Russell). Alas, it has not been so, with U.S. distributors consistently passing on the indie project, which began shooting in March of 2012.
Yes, 2012.
It’s a curiosity not easily explained (other than persistent rumors that the film is, well, just bad), and we’re really no closer with the first public glimpse of the film. Finally, just over a month out from the film’s U.K. release, we have a trailer. A pretty good trailer, even, although one that reveals next to nothing about either the movie’s plot or its quality.
As we reported nearly year ago when Serena was making the rounds for U.S. distributors, the film is based on a novel by Ron Rash about a young couple’s budding timber empire. The central drama surrounds the titular Serena (Lawrence), who thrives in the backwoods but finds herself infertile. Meanwhile, her husband George Pemberton (Cooper) has previously fathered an illegitimate child, and the woman’s family presses him for assistance. Marital jealousy and social pressures abound.
The impressive credits once seemed to destine Serena for a major festival opening, but with foreign markets now set to open the film, we won’t be shocked to see a U.S. distributor snatch Serena in hopes that the names will make a box office dent in the usually barren months of January or February, even if the product itself is (as would seem to be the case, though we’ll hold out hope for otherwise) lackluster.
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