When Gone Girl caught fire, adaptations of Gillian Flynn’s other ice-cold thrillers were put into development around the same time as the film take on that bestseller. But David Fincher’s Gone Girl failed to capture the Academy’s attention in the same manner many assumed it would, and now other Flynn-related projects are inevitably losing quite a bit of steam. Take Dark Places for example – the thriller boasts an ensemble cast powered by Charlize Theron, and yet it’s avoided exposure at the U.S. box office yet, despite screening overseas and slowly plotting other release dates. What exactly happened?
The simple answer may be that distributors saw the finished cut and realized that it was no Gone Girl. But with a talented helmer and great cast, I’m still crossing my fingers for the dark, twisty thriller.
Dark Places centers on Libby Day (Sterling Jerins), who was just eight years old when her parents were brutally murdered and she testified against her brother (Tye Sheridan) for committing the crime. Fast-forward a few decades, Libby is all grown up (and played by Theron) and her brother (Corey Stoll) is still behind bars. Her traumatized existence is upended, however, when a group that investigates old murders stumbles across her case, smells a rat and asks for her help to figure out what really happened. Let’s just say that it doesn’t go well.
Nicholas Hoult, Chloe Grace Moretz, Drea de Matteo, Christina Hendricks and Andrea Roth co-star, with Sarah’s Key director Gilles Paquet-Brenner sitting behind the camera. Dark Places has finally been set to open stateside on August 7 – but will it have been worth the wait? Chances are, the other recent Theron-Hoult collaboration (Mad Max: Fury Road) will prove to be more worthy of your time and money, but Flynn is a talented writer, so there’s hope for the pic yet.
