Susanne Bier‘s Serena sounds great on paper. Starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper, adapted from Ron Rash‘s highly acclaimed novel with Bier at the helm. Perfect, right? Well, Bier has since had two films premiere either in theaters or at film festivals and Serena will finally premiere at the London Film Festival next month, just ahead of a UK release. However, stateside, the film was still without distribution until now as The Hollywood Reporter brings word Magnolia has picked up the film for a 2015 release… no awards campaign will be waged. That isn’t what’s most interesting about this news though…
THR reports that CAA, which reps the movie, along with Bier, Lawrence and Cooper, held three private screenings featuring three different cuts of the film after which one buyer reportedly said, “The film was so edited, it made no sense.” Another called the performances “uneven, particularly Lawrence’s [descent into madness].”
The film follows newlyweds George (Cooper) and Serena Pemberton (Lawrence) who travel from Boston to the mountains of North Carolina where they begin to build a timber empire in 1929. Serena soon shows herself to be the equal of any man: overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. Together, this king and queen rule their dominion, killing or vanquishing all who stand in the way of their ambitions. But when Serena learns that she can never bear a child, she sets out to murder the woman who bore George a son before his marriage. And when she starts to suspect that George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage begins to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.
Magnolia will now release the film in 2015, and they seem like a perfect distributor to take in On Demand where Cooper and Lawrence fanbases will find it and maybe they can make a dime or two. Watch the Serena trailer and check out the poster below.
