Although the pandemic is still ongoing, Searchlight have announced the theatrical release date of a number of high profile films. Whether they’ll actually make these dates is anyone’s guess, but at least we have a clearer idea of when the movies will come out.
Arguably the biggest film is Guillermo del Toro‘s Nightmare Alley, which has been given an awards-friendly release of Friday, December 3.
It will be del Toro’s first film since winning the Academy Award for Best Director for The Shape Of Water. It’s based on William Lindsay Gresham‘s 1946 novel of the same name, which was previously adapted in 1947 with Tyrone Power in the lead.
The plot revolves around an ambitious young carny with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words. But when he hooks up with a female psychiatrist, he realises she is even more dangerous than he is.
The film boasts a star-studded cast that includes Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Rooney Mara, and Richard Jenkins.
Understandably, it’s one of the most anticipated releases of the year. But Searchlight has plenty of interesting titles coming out before Nightmare Alley.
One of them is David Bruckner‘s The Night House, which arrives on July 16 and focuses on Rebecca Hall‘s widow, who begins to uncover her recently deceased husband’s disturbing secrets. Bruckner’s The Ritual dropped on demand late last year and is an enjoyable horror-thriller.
After that, Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield star in The Eyes Of Tammy Faye, which drops on September 24. Based on the 2000 documentary of the same name, the fictionalised film will deliver an intimate look at the extraordinary rise, fall and redemption of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker.
Bakker and her husband Jim came from nowhere to create the world’s largest religious broadcasting network and theme park, and were once revered for their message of love, acceptance and prosperity. However, financial improprieties, scheming rivals, and big scandals soon toppled their carefully constructed empire. Michael Showalter (The Big Sick) is at the helm.
The final Searchlight release before Nightmare Alley is horror film Antlers, which Del Toro is actually involved in as a producer. Originally scheduled for an April 2020 release, it now arrives just in time for Halloween on October 29.
Starring Keri Russell and Jesse Plemons, it’s set in an isolated Oregon town, where a middle-school teacher and her sheriff brother become embroiled with her enigmatic student, whose dark secrets lead to terrifying encounters with a legendary ancestral creature.
That’s an exciting set of films, but curiously doesn’t include Wes Anderson‘s The French Dispatch. Searchlight has thus far not given the film a release date, with many positing that it’s due to a supposed Cannes Film Festival rollout, as the film was originally supposed to debut at the festival last year.
We’ll wait and see what happens with that, and cross our fingers that all the films mentioned above to indeed get to arrive in cinemas on time.
#Peace.Love.Searchlight
