Here's Murtada with just released pictures of 3 upcoming projects.
Michelle Pfeiffer as Ruth Madoff
Quick turnaround from the casting announcement, they have already started filming The Wizard of Lies and released the first picture. New cast members have been added to the HBO project including Nathan Darrow (famous for House of Cards' menage a trois with Robin Wright and Kevin Spacey) who will play the Madoff’s younger son Andrew.
Pfeiffer is completely transformed as Ruth Madoff. More...
Kudos to the makeup artists who managed to dim her shining beauty. This is dedication, people. Complete immersion in role. Still Ruth Madoff must be flattered and pleased to be played by Pfeiffer. Let’s hope they use Ruth’s 60 Minutes interview as a framing device so we can get maximum Pfeiffer.
Oh and Robert De Niro is in the picture too.
Cate Blanchett and Elisabeth Moss in Truth
This picture shows us some of the supporting cast Moss, Dennis Quaid and Topher Grace in addition to Blanchett. The “scuttlebutt’’ is that Blanchett might go supporting awards-wise in her headlining part in Carol because of this film. However she hasn’t mentioned Truth in her recent cover interview with New York Times Magazine even though it’s opening more than a month before Carol while being effusive about Todd Haynes. She’s not attending the film’s TIFF premiere tomorrow because she’s on stage in Sydney. Rumour has it that Carol skipped TIFF because of Blanchett’s theater commitments. Robert Redford so far has done the bulk of the promotion for Truth. The just released first clip focuses mostly on his Dan Rather. It could be because he’s playing Rather who’s much better known than his producer Mary Mapes (played by Blanchett). The movie though is based on Mapes’ book Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power implyig Mapes is front and center.
Has Spotlight hogged all the attention for stories about investigative journalism or is there space for more than one movie this fall? The truth about Truth will be unveiled very soon.
Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn in Blackbird
Acclaimed theater director Benedict Andrews is making his directorial debut with an adaptation of the play Blackbird. Andrews won critical kudos with his productions of Gross und Klein with Blanchett in Sydney and A Streetcar Named Desire with Gillian Anderson in London (that production is coming to Brooklyn in 2016). Blackbird tells the story of the devastating consequences of an illicit affair between a 15 year old girl and a middle aged man as she tracks him years later. Sounds like complex emotional issues that will give both Mara and Mendelsohn lots to play with. The play has been staged all over the world including a 2007 New York staging that starred Jeff Daniels and Alison Pill.
The movie is being presented to exhibitors at TIFF so expect distribution news soon.
Have these pictures done their job in selling their respective movies?