With a cast including Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Abigail Breslin and Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as the praised source material, coming from Tracy Letts play, The Weinstein Company are clearly hoping for major awards traction this fall for their upcoming August: Osage County. But audiences may not see the same cut that recently premiered at Toronto International Film Festival.
Spoilers ahead for those that don’t want to know the possible tail-end adjustment, as LA Times reports Harvey Weinstein and director John Wells are still discussing the final shot in the film. On the stage versaion, we saw Streep’s Violet Weston, the matriarch of a dysfunctional family, abandoned by them as she sits on the stairs of her house. In a less ambiguous ending, TIFF audiences saw a new scene following that, which featured Roberts’ Barbara driving away in her car, perhaps giving a more hopeful tinge.
Going by Weinstein’s usually audience-friendly ways, we have to imagine this new ending will stick, but we’ll have to wait and see, as all involved are still hashing it out with three months before opening. In the meantime, check out a new full-length railer and the complete TIFF press conference, moderated by Indiewire’s Anne Thompson, below for the film also starring Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Sam Shepard and Misty Upham.
Beverly Weston (played by Sam Shepard, another great American playwright, whose influence upon Letts is unmistakable) is an Oklahoma poet battling alcoholism, while his wife Violet (Meryl Streep) suffers from cancer and a new-found drug dependency. Not long after hiring a live-in caregiver for Violet, Beverly vanishes, prompting the family to unite in a search that ends with a morbid discovery. Mother and daughters (Julia Roberts, Julianne Nicholson and Juliette Lewis) are left to deal with the aftermath, and each other — the four women have never exactly seen eye-to-eye.
August: Osage County opens on December 25th.