A 20th Century Fox production, director Joe Wright's thriller The Woman in the Window was originally supposed to reach theatres in October of 2019 – but then it was pushed out of that date because the studio wanted reshoots after a test audience said the movie was too confusing. Disney inherited the film when they purchased Fox, and were going to give it a theatrical release in May of 2020. But then the pandemic hit, the film had to be pulled from the release schedule again, and Disney decided to hand it over to Netflix. Five months after Netflix acquired the film, we now have some idea when they plan to release it on the streaming service: according to Entertainment Weekly, The Woman in the Window will be available to watch sometime in the first half of 2021.
Entertainment Weekly also talked to Wright, who said the reshoots happened because
There were some plot points that people found a bit confusing — I would say possibly too opaque maybe. So we had to go back and clarify certain points, but I think also we tried to make sure we didn't oversimplify anything and make things too clear. There's an enjoyment in not knowing what's going on, but at the same time, you have to give the audience something to hold on to — you have to lead them through the labyrinth of mystery and fear."
Based on a novel by A.J. Finn (you can pick up a copy HERE) and written by Tracy Letts, the film stars Amy Adams as Dr. Anna Fox, "a woman of increasingly dubious reliability who cannot leave the confines of her house" because she has agoraphobia.
Anna occupies herself by drinking and watching her neighbors, the Russells. She starts to befriend one of them, Jane (Julianne Moore), but one night she witnesses Jane being stabbed and calls the police. Things get infinitely more complicated when a detective comes over with Jane's husband (Gary Oldman), who claims nothing happened, and to top it off, a different woman (Jennifer Jason Leigh) also shows up claiming to be Jane.
The cast also includes Letts, Anthony Mackie, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, and Fred Hechinger.
Wright said he was drawn to the project because he
liked the idea of the kind of minimalist constraints of making a film that is completely set in one house. I'm also interested in, and always have been, in the blurring between subjective and objective reality, truth and lies, and the lies we tell ourselves and how we create our own reality."
Once people see the film, he hopes they'll
take away from this is a sense that our own fears can incarcerate us. And this is a story about a woman who manages to overcome her own fears, and leave them behind her."
I've always been interested in The Woman in the Window due to the cast involved. The idea of the film being altered because a test audience was confused is troubling, but it doesn't sound like Wright feels the reshoots had a negative impact on his film. I look forward to watching it on Netflix.
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