If you’ve got a major production in need of rescuing, Tony Gilroy is apparently the guy to call. Just as he did with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, swooping in to oversee reshoots on Gareth Edwards’ film, Gilroy was brought in to save the long-delayed Amy Adams thriller The Woman in the Window.
The news on Gilroy was part of long profile piece by THR on the various abuses by producer Scott Rudin. I’m not going to get into all of the horrible things he’s alleged to have done with absolutely no consequence whatsoever, you can read the story for yourself. But embedded in that story was news that Rudin had taken the troubled Woman in the Window away from its director, Joe Wright, and hired Gilroy to oversee reshoots on it.
This is interesting only in that the story also says the reshoots by Gilroy didn’t help much and test results have been about the same. Remember, this is a film that we got the first trailer for more than two years ago when it was one of Fox’s most anticipated projects with many seeing it as the next Gone Girl. However, test screenings went very badly, then the whole Disney deal intruded in matters, and finally the film was acquired by Netflix who will release it on May 14th.
All this to say that The Woman in the Window has been delayed for more reasons than just the Disney deal and COVID-19. There were some obvious problems keeping this one on the shelf for so long and we might want to lower expectations. But Wright is a very talented filmmaker most of the time, and the cast includes Anthony Mackie, Gary Oldman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julianne Moore, and Wyatt Russell. Hard to think poorly of so much talent on one movie.
