The director officially enters awards season with the ensemble true-crime film starring Jon Hamm and Olivia Wilde.
Clint Eastwood is officially entering the 2020 awards season race with the debut of the first trailer for Richard Jewell.
Based on true events, the film recounts the story of a security guard who was deemed a hero after finding a device at the 1996 Atlanta bombing but then quickly became the FBI’s prime suspect. Soon after, Jewell (played by I, Tonya’s Paul Walter Hauser) was vilified by the press and public alike, with his life left torn apart.
Adapted from the Vanity Fair article, “American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell” by Marie Brenner, the film tells the story of “what happens when what is reported as fact obscures the truth.”
The harrowing first trailer for Richard Jewell gives a glimpse as the star-studded ensemble, which includes Oscar winners Sam Rockwell as Watson Bryant and Kathy Bates as Richard’s mom Bobi as well as Jon Hamm as the lead FBI investigator and Olivia Wilde as Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs.
“There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have thirty minutes,” Jewell is heard repeating over a montage of footage from the film before the trailer ends with Bryant asking, “Are you going to start fighting back?”
Written by Billy Ray and directed by Eastwood, Richard Jewell is also produced under the director’s Malpaso banner alongside Tim Moore, Jessica Meier, Kevin Misher, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Davisson and Jonah Hill.
Set to hit theaters on Dec. 13, 2019, the film is the first of two major projects about the 1996 events. The other being Lionsgate’s upcoming season of the anthology true-crime series, Manhunt: Lone Wolf.
The cast includes Jack Huston and Carla Gugino with Mindhunter breakout Cameron Britton as Jewell and Judith Light as his mother. “It’s really an extraordinary piece of work,” Light recently told ET about signing on to the series. “It is quite remarkable, and I feel very fortunate to be able to do that as well.”
RELATED CONTENT:
