At the tail end of an 8.21 “Notes on the Season” piece about the Emmy and Oscar races, Deadline‘s Pete Hammond mentions that The Report costar Jon Hamm “mentioned” the other night that “he believes Clint Eastwood‘s Richard Jewell — so far not officially dated by Warner Bros — will be released in December.”
I’m hearing that it’s more than a case of Hamm believing this will happen, but that it’s pretty much locked and loaded. Warner Bros. will of course deny or sidestep until they announce down the road.
During filming pic was called The Ballad of Richard Jewell, which was also the title of Marie Brenner’s 1997 Vanity Fair article. The IMDB still refers to it as The Ballad of Richard Jewell but Wikipedia is calling it plain old Richard Jewell (which doesn’t sound good, by the way — the title needs “The Ballad of”).
From “They Done Him Wrong“, posted on 6.18.19: “The conservative-minded Eastwood is doing The Ballad of Richard Jewell, of course, because of the anti-news media narrative.
“In Jewel’s case the narrative (which unfolded over 88 days from late July to late October of ’96) was earned and then some. Several reporters and commentators (including the Atlanta Constitution‘s Kathy Scruggs and NBC’s Tom Brokaw) fingered Jewell as the likely Atlanta bomber without having all the facts.
“Jewell’s tragedy nonetheless feeds into Trump’s fake news mythology, and Eastwood’s film, you bet, will almost certainly strike a chord in America’s heartland or, you know, with the same ticket-buyers who flocked to Clint’s American Sniper and chortled along with Grant Torino‘s Walt Kowalski.”
Hammond: “Will this be another sneak attack on Oscar season from four-time winner Eastwood, a producer-director fond of quickly delivering his movies. Just last year he did that with The Mule, and in the past has had great success with such films as American Sniper and Million Dollar Baby in December. Warner Bros has an unusually strong slate of possible awards contenders already this year, but what’s one more when it comes from Eastwood? We shall see.”
