A New York reader caught a research screening of Ron Howard‘s Frost/Nixon last week near Union Square, and has some generally favorable things to say. Shot only about three months ago, this adaptation of Peter Morgan‘s play about the famous David Frost/Richard Nixon TV interview of 1977 is “a solid, satisfying historical drama….no knockout but it fights a good fight and lands its share of solid punches.

“Frank Langella‘s Nixon is very good,” the guy says. ” Wearing very little make-up (thankfully), his performance is fully felt and fleshed out. His Nixon is competitive and guarded, but Langella makes him sympathetic, a political fighter angling for one last twilight bout without being scrubbed entirely clean of his…uhm…imperfections.”
Universal will be releasing Frost/Nixon sometime in the late summer or early fall…I think. Unless they come to believe that audiences will be sick of the ’08 presidential campaign by then. An instinct is telling me this may be the case and that Frost/Nixon, certain to be commercially limited in any season, will play better in late March or April or perhaps even early May — sometime before the nominating season peaks in the mid to late summer.