Everyone has already started penciling Bill Murray in for an Oscar nomination for his upcoming role as Franklin D. Roosevelt in Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson co-starring Laura Linney, Olivia Williams, Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Wilson, Eleanor Bron and Samuel West.
The film is set in 1939 and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Murray) and his wife Eleanor (Williams) are hosting the King and Queen of England (West and Colman) for a weekend at the Roosevelt home at Hyde Park on Hudson, in upstate New York — the first-ever visit of a reigning English monarch to America.
With Britain facing imminent war with Germany, the Royals are desperately looking to FDR for support. But international affairs must be juggled with the complexities of FDR’s domestic establishment, as wife, mother, and mistresses all conspire to make the royal weekend an unforgettable one. Seen through the eyes of Daisy (Linney), Franklin’s distant cousin, neighbor, and intimate, the weekend will produce not only a special relationship between two great nations, but, for Daisy — and through her, for us all — a deeper understanding of the mysteries of love and friendship.
The pic is set for a December 7 release through Focus Features and it’s also one I shortlisted as a potential Best Picture contender earlier this year. Give the trailer a watch below and see what you think and more important, beyond Oscar chances, does it look like a good film?
