Despite a cast that screams Oscar powerhouse, the response to John Wells' August: Osage County was mixed after its TIFF debut. Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts star in the adaptation of Tracy Letts' Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning play about the Weston family women, who have all gone their separate ways but return home to Oklahoma and their dysfunctional, drug-addicted mother after a tragedy strikes. Much of the praise has been heaped upon the cast, which also features Benedict Cumberbatch, Ewan McGregor, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis, Margo Martindale, Sam Shepard, and Chris Cooper, but the film's extremely bleak tone seem to be a chief complaint.
Based on that and Letts' source material, the latest trailer is obviously misleading in that it depicts a light family comedy, when in truth the story goes to some seriously dark places. It's those dark areas that apparently turned off test audiences and drove Harvey Weinstein to demand the dour ending be tweaked to present a more hopeful picture. The changes were made, but according to Vulture there's still question which version will end up in theaters. Wells certainly knows where he stands on the issue, revealing to the LA Times that he hopes the original version wins out....
Wells: "I'm not sure I’m OK with doing it that way. I don't want to say there's anything wrong with the current ending, because there isn't. But it's something we’re still talking about. We don’t open for three months, and it’s possible you’ll see something different."
Whichever version we end up with, Weinstein is going to put a ton of Best Picture muscle behind August: Osage County when it opens on Christmas Day.
