Hugh Jackman is stuck in a political sex scandal in The Front Runner trailer

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Right now, there is a president in the White House who is constantly being caught in scandals, getting into fights on Twitter, and making headlines for all sorts of absurd behavior to the point where even the notion of an affair with him and a porn star is merely another story of the day. Such acts would tank any political career in the past and in 1988 Senator Gary Hart’s campaign for president was totally derailed after he was caught in the kind of scandal that seems passé by today’s standards.  Jason Reitman’s (JUNO, TULLY) latest movie tackles this story with Hugh Jackman in the lead as Hart, and you can watch the first trailer for the drama now. Oh, to dream of the time when an affair could destroy a political career.

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The story centers not only on Hart but the journalists who worked to uncover Hart’s affair, forcing audiences to confront the choice of whether this was the right or wrong approach from the press. Reitman co-wrote the script with Jay Carson (a once Hilary Clinton spokesperson), and Matt Bai, author of the book the movie is based on, “All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics Went Tabloid.”

Reitman spoke with EW about how Hart and the press approach, and how their responses marked a shift in the entire landscape.

“It was a moment in which the Hart campaign, The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, and Hart himself were trying to make decisions in real time with not enough information and no sense of how much the landscape had changed forever,”

The movie also stars Vera Farmiga, J.K. Simmons, Alfred Molina, Sara Paxton, Mamoudou Athie and more. The movie will premiere at Telluride and TIFF before hitting theaters November 7, which means the studio has faith it could be a real Oscar contender.

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Here is the full synopsis:

Oscar® nominee Hugh Jackman stars as the charismatic politician Gary Hart for Academy Award®-nominated director Jason Reitman in the new thrilling drama The Front Runner.  The film follows the rise and fall of Senator Hart, who captured the imagination of young voters and was considered the overwhelming front runner for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination when his campaign was sidelined by the story of an extramarital relationship with Donna Rice. As tabloid journalism and political journalism merged for the first time, Senator Hart was forced to drop out of the race – events that left a profound and lasting impact on American politics and the world stage.