John Wells’ August: Osage County, the adaptation of Tracy Letts’ award-winning play, is pretty much guaranteed to be an Oscar contender come awards season at the year’s end.
The film features one of the greatest casts of the year, led by Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, and Ewan McGregor. Original playwright Letts has adapted his own play for the big screen. And George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Harvey Weinstein all serve as producers.
With the buzz already surrounding the project, its first trailer has been released, giving us a brilliant first look at the film.
The story of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, whose lives have diverged until a family crisis brings them back to the Midwest house they grew up in, and to the dysfunctional woman who raised them.
Streep, Roberts, and McGregor are joined by a fantastic cast, led by Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Jack Nicholson, Sam Shepard, and Misty Upham.
Wells is directing from a script penned by Letts, based on the latter’s original play, August: Osage County, which won substantial critical acclaim following its debut, taking a slew of Tony Awards, and winning Letts the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The film marks Wells’ sophomore feature, following his criminally-underappreciated directorial debut, The Company Men. If you’ve not seen the Ben Affleck-, Tommy Lee Jones-, Chris Cooper-, and Kevin Costner-led movie already, I highly recommend you seek it out as soon as humanly possible.
August: Osage County will be released in US theatres on November 8th, perfectly primed for an awards campaign heading towards the Oscars. No word yet on a firm UK release date, but here’s to hoping it will be crossing the Atlantic before the year’s end.
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