Almost miraculously given its troubled production history, Natalie Portman’s “Jane Got a Gun” has been given a release date.
The Gavin O’Connor-directed western, which also stars Joel Edgerton, Ewan McGregor and Noah Emmericah, has been slated to hit theaters on August 29, 2014, it was announced today. O’Connor (“Warrior”) came aboard the project at the last minute after original director Lynne Ramsay (“We Need to Talk About Kevin”) declined to show up for the first day of filming back in March.
Early this month the film’s producers (a group that includes Portman) filed a lawsuit against Ramsay which alleges, among other things, that the writer/director failed to do work on the script after being paid for the rewrite and exhibited abusive behavior on set during pre-production. The suit asks that Ramsay pay back her salary, in addition to ponying up for punitive damages.
“Jane Got a Gun” centers on the title character (Portman), a frontier woman who enlists the help of her former lover (Edgerton) when she and her husband (Emmerich) are targeted by a violent gang. McGregor plays the gang’s leader John Bishop, a role that at various times was set to be filled by Edgerton, Jude Law and Bradley Cooper.
Will you be seeing “Jane Got a Gun” when it hits theaters? Let us know in the comments.