We have the Weinstein Company on the brain. Aside from Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” (with a perpetually mysterious release date) and Spike Jonze’s “Where The Wild Things Are,” our most anticipated film from what’s left of 2009 is Rob Marshall’s “Nine.”
But TWC’s year is not all that it seems. Sure, early in the year they were having money problems, but with Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds,” which is now the director’s highest grossing film ever, and has made a glorious $227 million worldwide and $111 million in the U.S., problem solved, right?
No, as we’ve been saying all along, ‘Basterds’ cost in the neighborhood of $70-s0me million to produce and that doesn’t count the $30-40 (generous) million it cost to market it (those UFC deals, etc.), plus the film was co-funded with Universal so the profits are shared. Further proof ‘Basterds’ isn’t necessarily changing the tide for TWC? The company continues to downsize and Variety just announced that they had even more layoffs today. There’s a reason why things like, “Youth In Revolt,” “Shanghai,” and “All Good Things” were pushed into 2010, they just don’t have the money to market them right now.
All their efforts are concentrated on Oscar which means, the Venice and TIFF-adored Tom Ford directorial-debut, “A Single Man,” and Rob Marshall’s “Nine.” Harvey Weinstein is all gung-ho about “A Single Man,” and with good reason, it’s an incredible film with lots of Oscar chances, but as many have pointed out in our Oscar discussions “Nine,” has all that star wattage (Nicole Kidman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, etc.) that really sells itself.
But there’s been talk that “Nine,” could be bumped into 2010 (which was denied by TWC). As for right now, it shares a November 25 date with another TWC film, “The Road,” but presumably the musical has more Oscar chances than that film, no? (while it’s good and we liked it a lot, Viggo Mortensen is really the only practical contender). Last we all heard, “Nine” would only have a limited release Nov. 25 but expand into wide distribution on Christmas. So perhaps that makes them ostensibly on different release dates.
All this is a long-winded way of saying, here’s a “Nine” sneak-peek clip that was shown on Entertainment Tonight and really, we’re dying to see this film, but we’ll admit the trailer from a few months ago looked much more dazzling than the footage below. Maybe it’s because of the annoying ET hosts that we can’t fully get into it.