Reese Witherspoon Starrer Wild Set For Oscar-Friendly Fall Release, Plus New Pic

At this point in time, it’s pretty easy to make some educated guesses about which movies will be competing on the awards circuit in the fall and winter of 2014. We’ve got David Fincher’s Gone Girl heating up October, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar opening the next month, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice and Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings actually opening side by side one week in December, to name a few likely contenders. Then there are some less sure things, like Kill the Messenger, Fury, Big Eyes, Into the Woods and Unbroken all opening between October and December. Now, we can add Fox Searchlight’s Wild, scheduled to open December 5th, to the list of Oscar hopefuls.

Starring Reese Witherspoon and adapted from the memoir by Cheryl Strayed, Wild centers on one woman’s solo journey across America. The supporting cast is stuffed with fine actors, like Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski, Gaby Hoffmann, Kevin Rankin and Michiel Huisman, but Wild is mostly a showcase for Witherspoon’s acting abilities. Given her penchant for taking on bad rom-coms, it’s easy to forget that she is a tremendously talented actress (not to mention one with an Oscar already on her mantlepiece, for Walk the Line), so her performance is already reason to suspect that Wild could stand a fighting chance of snagging some accolades.

Adding to the buzz for Wild is the fact that its director, Jean-Marc Vallée, previously directed another biopic: Dallas Buyers Club, which received six Oscar noms and took home three statuettes, for Best Actor (Matthew McConaughey), Best Supporting Actor (Jared Leto) and Best Makeup and Hairstyling (Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews). Wild was also scripted by celebrated author Nick Hornby (High Fidelity), as if the amount of talent involved wasn’t overwhelming enough already.

Check out the official plot synopsis below, along with a new photo from the film, and let us know whether you’re excited to see Wild when it opens on December 5th.

With the dissolution of her marriage and the death of her mother, Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon)has lost all hope. After years of reckless, destructive behavior, she makes a rash decision. With absolutely no experience, driven only by sheer determination, Cheryl hikes more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone. WILD powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddens, strengthens, and ultimately heals her.