A trailer has dropped for Jason Reitman’s new movie ‘The Front Runner’ which sees Hugh Jackman play Gary Hart, a charismatic politician who was the front runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination until he fell from grace when media reports revealed his extramarital affair.
Reitman would be best-known as the director of ‘Juno’ and ‘Up in the Air’ (and one of our top movies of 2018 so far, ‘Tully’), and no doubt his latest will be looking at big awards contention.
The director has previously earned four Academy Award nominations for his work – and just look at how timely the narrative of his latest is. It’s ridiculously Oscar bait-y.
Jackman, who most recently starred in ‘The Greatest Showman’, a major box office hit following his departure from Wolverine with ‘Logan’, could very well be going for acting awards here too.
If we’re looking at early Best Actor Oscars contenders, it would seem Jackman’s biggest competition right now is Ryan Gosling, who is getting huge praise for his performance as Neil Armstrong in ‘First Man’.
An official synopsis for ‘The Front Runner’, which co-stars Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons and Alfred Molina, reads:
“The film follows the rise and fall of Senator Hart, who captured the imagination of young voters and was considered the overwhelming front runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination when his campaign was sidelined by the story of an extramarital relationship with Donna Rice.
“As tabloid journalism and political journalism merged for the first time, Senator Hart was forced to drop out of the race – events that left a profound and lasting impact on American politics and the world stage.”
‘The Front Runner’ will have its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in September and go on release in the US in November. The UK release date is in January 2019 so we likely won’t get it until then either.
