What a long, strange trip to the theater it’s been for Margaret.
Kenneth Lonergan, writer of Gangs of New York and Analyze This, directed a film titled Margaret starring Anna Paquin, Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, and Matthew Broderick back in 2005. IndieWire sums up the plot of the film as having “echoes of 9/11 survivor’s guilt, and follows the ramifications of a tragic bus accident as seen through the eyes of a high school student desperate to parse the tragedy for a deeper spiritual meaning.” Don’t remember it? That’s because it hasn’t been released, even six years later, except for a handful of preview screenings. Lonergan had difficulty editing the film — he shot a 300 page script and assembled a three hour cut even though his contract with Fox Searchlight stipulated that the film had to be two hours. Lawsuits flew back and forth, and for much of the last six-plus years it seemed doubtful that the movie would ever see the light of day in any form, mostly because it was so tied up in legal wrangling. An additional fallout is that Lonergan has not worked in the film business since, as the drama over the film’s length essentially blackballed him from the industry.
There were some rumblings about the film being released earlier this year — producer Gary Gilbert said it would happen, and none other than Martin Scorsese (who worked with Lonergan on the aforementioned Gangs of New York and was an Executive Producer on Lonergan‘s You Can Count on Me) was brought in to work with Lonergan on assembling an acceptable cut. Whether that collaboration was fruitful or not isn’t known, but this much is known: Fox Searchlight is finally releasing the film on September 30. This is likely a limited release, but there’s no word on just exactly how limited the release will be — to fulfill contractual obligations, often a studio just has to run a film it doesn’t believe in somewhere in one theater. Considering that date is less than eight weeks away and there seems to be little or no promotion planned, it’s unlikely this will receive a very wide release.
There’s also no word on how long the film will be except for IMDB listing the length as 149 minutes. That seems like a compromise that leans toward the Fox Searchlight side if that runtime is accurate, meaning Lonergan was more-or-less shut out of the editing room. Whether Lonergan‘s three hour cut will ever be released or if the film will ever get any sort of DVD release in any form is an iffy question with no answer at this time. Nonetheless, the story surrounding this film has always intrigued me, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to see it — in any form — come September 30.
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