Interesting. We kinda had a hunch that “Peacock,” apparently a Mandate film, was never coming out. The film had been shot ages ago and when we were doing research on it for our Most Anticipated Films of 2010 piece, the website was generic and seemed left for dead.
But all of a sudden, there’s movement, or a functioning person behind the site, as new images have been posted and more.
Directed by Michael Lander (his only other IMDB credit is the short “Solid Waste” from 2000), the film stars Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Josh Lucas, Bill Pullman and Susan Sarandon and is evidently a dark thriller, about a quiet Nebraskan bank clerk (Murphy) with multiple personalities (one male, one female) who finds his life in disarray when a train crashes into his backyard, revealing his secret to the public. He must then attempt to fool the town into believing these two separate personalities are actually a married man and wife couple (wtf??).
Despite the comedic-sounding synopsis, this Hitchcock-ian psychological thriller — described once by Lucas as, “what would happen if Norman Bates had basically stayed alive and married himself” — sounds pretty twisted. However, shooting was completed in 2008, so we weren’t holding our breath.
But the site has lots of goodies, including an official synopsis (though a vague one on the twist):
Cillian Murphy delivers a career defining performance as John Skillpa, a quiet bank clerk living in tiny Peacock, Nebraska, who prefers to live an invisible life. This might have to do with John’s secret: he has another personality no one knows about, a woman who each morning does his chores and cooks him breakfast before he starts his day. Then, in a moment, everything changes.
And a gallery of photos. Unfortunately there is no word on a release date yet. Not to be too skeptical, but when a film sits around for this long with this kind of pretty great talent, chances are there’s probably something deeply flawed with it. Hey, we’d love to be proven wrong, but dunno… Either way, interesting cast. We’ll keep our ears and eyes out.