Update: Photos removed by the request of the Weinstein Company. Update 2: 1 photo back up at the TIFF site.
While we’ve been interested in Madonna‘s “W.E.” because the of cast she’s attracted — Abbie Cornish, Andrea Riseborough, James D’Arcy and Oscar Issac — and its narratively ambitious scope, we have to admit, we didn’t really consider it too seriously as a major force until The Weinstein Company picked up the film and then dated it for a release right in the thick of the awards season. It looks like we’ve come a long way from “Filth And Wisdom.”
With a world premiere at Venice in just a few short weeks, and a North American premiere coming up at TIFF in September we now have our first stills from the film and they are pretty beautiful. It looks like the name of cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski is one we’ll need to be keeping an eye on (he also lensed the lovely “The Young Victoria“). The film will tell the parallel stories of the love affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, which led to the royal’s abdication, and the 1998-set story of a woman, Wally Winthrop, with romantic problems of her own, in addition to an obsession with the life of the Duchess of Windsor. It appears that the film will alternate between black and white and color as it jumps back and forth through time, but it certainly seems no detail in the clothing and make-up department has gone unnoticed.
Mega producer William Orbit (probably best known for manning the boards of Madonna‘s smash hit “Ray Of Light”) and composer Abel Korzeniowski are helping on the score and film will land on December 9th in theaters. So is this one a contender? We’ll know in a few short weeks. Synopsis and pics below. [TIFF]
Second-time director Madonna returns with W.E., featuring Abbie Cornish as Wally Winthrop, a woman in 1998 who is infatuated with the 1930s marriage of King Edward VIII (James D’Arcy) and American divorcée Wallis Simpson (Andrea Riseborough). Spanning six decades, W.E. gracefully weaves the past and present into two parallel love stories.
UPDATE: It looks as though Orbit’s music will not be used in the film, with Korzeniowski taking to his Facebook page to clear things up: “FYI: None of William Orbit’s music is used in Madonna’s W.E. Apparently, the source of some confusion is Orbit’s old interview, where he comments on a very early cut of W.E.: “I’ve done two pieces of score music for the film”. That information is outdated.”
