By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief
Amy Adams, who started her career with Theatre Palisades, can next be seen in a starring role in “Hillbilly Elegy”—an American drama film directed by Ron Howard and based on the eponymous 2016 novel penned by J.D. Vance.
Described as a “modern exploration of the American Dream through three generations of an Appalachian family,” the story follows a Yale law student, played by Gabriel Basso, who returns to his Ohio hometown after a family emergency.
Adams takes on the role of Bev, starring alongside Glenn Close, Haley Bennett, Freida Pinto, Bo Hopkins and Owen Asztalos.
Produced by Brian Grazer, Howard and Karen Lunder, the screenplay was created by Vanessa Taylor with music by Hans Zimmer and David Flemming.
Imagine Entertainment originally won the rights to the memoir back in April 2017 for Howard to direct. In February of the next year, Taylor signed on to adapt the novel into a screenplay.
Over the course of the next year, Howard was reported to be spotted in Ohio, scouting multiple film locations. It was in January 2019 that Netflix won the rights to the film when bidding $45 million on the project. Close, Adams, Basso and Bennett joined the cast in April of that year, with Pinto, Hopkins and Asztalos signing on that June.
Principal photography took place over the course of summer 2019, following a 43-day shooting schedule, with a few days of filming taking place outside of the book’s setting of Middletown, Ohio. The majority of the film was shot in Georgia, reaching the post-production stage in January of this year.
Mixed reception of the film places it at a 28% score on Rotten Tomatoes as the paper went to print.
The film, which is rated R and runs just shy of two hours, was released in select theater in the United States on November 11, with a digital release on Netflix slated for November 24.
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