Two icons are back in action this weekend as Roadside Attractions presents the comedy Let’s move on With Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin on nearly 800 screens, hoping it will unite female audiences.
Focus Features also opens with Willem Dafoe in the title role Indoors Vasilis from Katsoup on more than 350 screens.
It has been relatively quiet in the specialty industry. “There isn’t an outlet for that audience right now,” said Howard Cohen, co-chairman of Roadside Attractions. “I think this is an opportunity that we felt — it’s after the Oscars and before the Sundance movies and the summer movies.”
Fonda and Tomlin have great alchemy. They acted together in the 1980s 9 to 5played together for seven years in the Netflix sitcom Grace and Frankie and another led the recent 80 for Brady. The cast as directed by their Paul Weitz Let’s move on, which premiered in Toronto, also features Malcolm McDowell and Richard Roundtree. Deadline check here. It’s a wide-ranging special, and Cohen said it’s a good sign that the trailer got more than 7 million views. Fonda and Tomlin have been promoting the film on social media and in TV appearances since View Thu The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It was heavily trailered earlier 80 for Brady.
Wide releases and franchises have arrived more regularly, but specialty films have been slower to pick up the pace of new releases. “We don’t have that kind of flow in the indie world. There hasn’t been much for a special audience since the fall,” Cohen said. “Part of it is, if you build it, they will come. You need a reasonably steady diet of these movies that (people) want to see. It gets that habit back.”
“We’re going to be patient,” he said, echoing other indie distributors.
Fonda and Tomlin star as estranged friends who come together to avenge their recently deceased best friend’s husband and make peace with the past and each other.
A psychological thriller Indoors is the directorial debut of filmmaker Katsoupis. Dafoe is Nemo, an art thief trapped in a New York penthouse after his heist doesn’t go as planned. There are only priceless works of art inside him, and he must use all his cunning and invention to survive. It premiered in Berlin. Deadline check here.
Janus Films presents Innocent at the IFC Center in NYC. Louis Garrel’s comedy won Best Original Screenplay César for director and screenwriters Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet, as well as Best Supporting Actress for Tár star Noemie Merlant. It also led the nominations with 11. Garrel, Roschdy Zem and Anouk Grinberg also star in the film about a suspicious young man who tries to derail his mother’s new relationship with a recently released inmate. Premiere in Cannes. Deadline check.
Also in specialty: Niu Vision Media/Beyond Events open Chinese success Full River Red Yimou Zhang in more than 150 theaters in more than 50 markets. In 12th century China, an ambassador is killed and a letter intended for the emperor is stolen. In the search for the letter, alliances are formed, secrets are revealed, and no one can stop the truth that is destined to leave its mark in history.