\tJude Law thriller\u00a0\u201cThe Order,\u201d\u00a0which opens next week in the U.S., has not been an easy sell amid the current Trumpian zeitgeist.<\/p>\n
\tThe Justin Kurzel-directed\u00a0film,\u00a0in which Law plays\u00a0an FBI agent fighting\u00a0white supremacist\u00a0terrorists in 1980s Idaho, is emblematic of how U.S. buyers are gun shy in general right now. And particularly so, when it comes to politically sensitive fare. <\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhen we came to sell the\u00a0film (before its Venice launch) there were some distributors who were outwardly nervous\u00a0that its subject\u00a0matter was divisive from a Red State\/Blue State perspective,\u201d said \u201cThe Order\u201d producer Stuart Ford on Saturday speaking on the sidelines of Morocco\u2019s Marrakech Film Festival, where the thriller was the warmly received opener. \t<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe think\u00a0that was a hopelessly overcautious way of looking at the\u00a0film. But that definitively was a factor,\u201d added Ford, who heads prominent indie content company AGC Studios. <\/p>\n
\t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \tBased on true events, \u201cThe Order\u201d is set in 1983 in Coeur d\u2019Alene, Idaho. Law puts in a powerful performance as a lone FBI agent who, following a series of increasingly violent bank robberies and car heists, comes to realize that they\u2019re the work of a group of dangerous domestic neo-Nazi white suprematist terrorists. They are inspired by the real-life radical leader Robert Jay Mathews, played by Nicholas Hoult, and are plotting a war against the U.S. government.<\/p>\n
\tFord said that \u201cThere is no doubt\u201d\u00a0that \u201cThe Order\u201d fits into the Trumpian Zeitgeist. \u201cUnfortunately, the\u00a0relevance of the\u00a0film speaks for itself,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe did debate significantly \u2013 both before we sold U.S. distribution rights, and then\u00a0afterward, when we\u00a0had a U.S.\u00a0distribution partner \u2013 about: Do we\u00a0release the\u00a0film before the election, or after the election?,\u201d the producer revealed.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIn the end we\u00a0decided to go with whatever\u00a0made more sense for the\u00a0film, from a competitive prospective, because the\u00a0reality of the\u00a0film is no more or less relevant because of what happened before,\u201d Ford went on to point out.<\/p>\n
\tVertical will be giving \u201cThe Order\u201d a U.S. platform release on 600-700 screens starting Dec. 6, while Amazon, which owns most international rights, will release the film in the U.K. on Dec. 27. \t<\/p>\n
\tDoes Ford think \u201cThe Order\u201d will ruffle feathers in the U.S.? \u201cNo,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t think there are any more feathers left to be ruffled,\u201d after all the post-election commotion. Also, \u201cThe movie rocks, both as an old school\u00a0crime thriller and as a piece of polemic, if you will,\u201d he noted. \u201cWe\u00a0have all the ingredients of a strong end-of-year release in the indie fashion,\u201d Ford went on to add.<\/p>\n
\tMeanwhile, in a further indication of how tough the U.S. indie market is at the moment, aside from any political connotations that films may have, another Jude Law-starrer produced by AGC, Ron Howard\u2019s \u201cEden,\u201d remains without distribution, though Ford said he has high hopes of closing a deal on \u201cEden\u201d soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jude Law thriller\u00a0\u201cThe Order,\u201d\u00a0which opens next week in the U.S., has not been an easy sell amid the current Trumpian zeitgeist. The Justin Kurzel-directed\u00a0film,\u00a0in which Law plays\u00a0an FBI agent fighting\u00a0white supremacist\u00a0terrorists in 1980s Idaho, is emblematic of how U.S. buyers are gun shy in general right now. And particularly so, when it comes to politically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19721,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}