Felicity Jones and Eddie Redmayne will be reunited on screen at this year’s BFI London Film Festival in adventure movie The Aeronauts.

The pair were both Oscar-nominated for 2014’s The Theory of Everything with Redmayne winning for his portrayal of physicist Stephen Hawking.

This year’s festival will host the European premiere of The Aeronauts.

It tells the story of an attempt to fly a gas balloon higher than anyone has before.

It was previously been announced the 11-day long celebration of film will open and close with two other European premieres - Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield and Martin Scorsese’s mob epic The Irishman, which stars Oscar winners Robert de Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci.

Other films that will be shown during the Festival include whodunit mystery Knives Out, starring Daniel Craig and Avengers star Chris Evans, and The King, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Parts One and Two and Henry V, starring Timothée Chalamet and Robert Pattinson.

There will also be Gala Premieres of Avengers star Scarlett Johansson’s two most recent movies, the wartime satire Jojo Rabbit, where she plays the mother of a young boy whose imaginary friend is an idiotic version of Hitler, and Marriage Story where she stars opposite Star Wars actor Adam Driver in the story of a couple’s difficult break up.

The festival will screen a total of 229 features with around one in three of those coming from female film-makers representing a slight increase from last 2018’s programme. Continue reading  »

The Aeronauts, a film designed for IMAX and filmed partially with IMAX cameras, will no longer be headed to IMAX theaters. Last week, Amazon Studios changed its release plan for the Eddie Redmayne–Felicity Jones-led drama, pushing its theatrical run back from October 25—with one week exclusively in IMAX—to December 6, leaving just two weeks in theaters before it begins streaming on Amazon. When the news broke, Collider’s Adam Chitwood questioned what that meant for the film’s IMAX chances. According to THR, those chances just fell out of the wicker basket completely.

“We don’t expect to be part of that release,” IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond said during an earnings call, suggesting that the exhibitor isn’t likey to play host to a film that doesn’t honor the 90-day exclusive theatrical window.

Directed by Tom Harper (Wild Rose) and written by Jack Thorne (National Treasure), The Aeronauts follows widow Amelia Wren (Jones) and scientist James Glaisher (Redmayne) as they attempt to set the record for the highest hot air balloon ride in history. The 1862-set movie has been pretty obviously positioned as Amazon Studio’s big Oscar hopeful this year; Manchester By the Sea earned the streamer two Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay, but the studio has yet to take home the big one, Best Picture, since it started producing original films. It’ll be mighty interesting to keep an eye on how The Aeronauts‘ miniature theatrical run impacts its 2019 Oscar chances. [Source]