Few rises in the filmmaking world have been as meteoric as Colin Trevorrow’s. The director went from a low-budget, crowd-pleasing indie with Sundance favorite “Safety Not Guaranteed” to the megabudget “Jurassic World,” a movie that became one of the top-grossing films in history on its release two years ago. And at the start of next year, he’ll get underway with production on the new “Star Wars” movie, the as yet untitled ‘Episode IX‘ that will follow J.J. Abrams’ ‘The Force Awakens‘ and Rian Johnson’s ‘The Last Jedi.’
But between those two tentpoles, Trevorrow went off and made a much smaller film, and after some delays (it was pushed back from last fall, apparently after glowing test-screening notices), we finally know when it’ll premiere, as the L.A. Times have announced that the director’s “The Book Of Henry” will open the L.A. Film Festival on June 14th.
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Scripted by Gregg Hurwitz, the film stars Jaeden Lieberher as a young boy who concocts an elaborate plan to save a neighbor (Maddie Ziegler) from her abusive stepfather (Dean Norris), enlisting his mother (Naomi Watts) and little brother (“Room” breakout Jacob Tremblay) in the scheme. The recent trailer made it look like an ambitious meld of tones and genres that could either be a “Safety Not Guaranteed”-style triumph or a historic trainwreck, but we’ll be excited to find out either way when the film premieres ahead of its June 16th release.
The festival also announced that they’ll be hosting a screening of the Cannes-bound Sundance fave “Brigsby Bear” starring Kyle Mooney, Claire Danes and Mark Hamill, and the premiere of the first episode of Season 2 of Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar.” The rest of the line-up will be announced a week today, May 9th, so check back then for more.