Jennifer Lawrence to star in A24 drama

Out.

That's very interesting. Not Guadagnino, not McKay. She's breaking her hiatus to do an indie with a first-time filmmaker. This being a Rudin/A24 makes me less weary of the untested talent surrounding the project.

pathetic blind JLaw hatebot. 

Can't wait for another Golden Globe win and Oscar nom. Meanwhile, lets revisit this wonderful moment:



👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

This is not a logical statement.

she started out in a way that suggested she would be one of the most important dramatic actors of her generation, she now almost exclusively traffics in box office bombs when she tries something artsy or in moronic CGI superhero fuckfests 

Oh honey, I was already offered this and turned it down. It's a remake of A23.

she's going down brah, ya heard it here first

Rumour is that it’s Lucas Hedges.

Lawrence is doing fine in the sense that she's still an A-lister headlining major studio releases and making a shitload of money for every project that she signs up for, but moonman is right that she's yet to really live up to the promise of her breakout success at the beginning of the decade.

At first I was willing to give her a break because her commitment to The Hunger Games and X-Men (both of which she signed up for at a point in her career when she needed the exposure to get her name out there) took up a lot of her time. For a while there she was locked into cycles of David O. Russell/Katniss/Mystique, which yielded very mixed results: SLP is one of her best performances and I get that she wanted to keep working with her friends, but she was wildly inconsistent in American Hustle and Joy is a hopeless mess, Oscar nominations be damned; she's solid as Katniss and THG is fine as far as blockbuster franchises go, but no one really talks about those films anymore; and while I do like First Class and DOFP a good deal, her Mystique is a complete non-starter, and I hear nothing but pans for her performances even among comic enthusiasts.

So yeah, that was frustrating, but things were starting to look up after 2015 because Lawrence's contractual duties to Hunger Games were over and she took a much needed break from O. Russell, so that was the point when her career was bound to really come into full bloom... until it just kinda didn't.

She was supposed to work with Linklater and Spielberg, but dropped out of the former project for unspecified reasons while the latter never got any traction at all and is probably not happening ever (at least not with this particular duo). She was recently linked to Luca Guadagnino's Burial Rites but then he announced another 72 projects after that, so who knows what'll happen there. Tarantino was heaping praise on her a while back and I even remember hearing some speculation that he had a role for her in his upcoming project (which would turn out to be The Hateful Eight), but obviously that didn't pan out back then, nor did he approach her to play Sharon Tate in his follow-up (though truth be told, I'm not sure if Lawrence was ever seriously considered to play Daisy Domergue or if that's just talk). Woody Allen also had good things to say about her, but Emma Stone and Kristen Stewart wound up taking the slots that might've potentially gone to her. I also vaguely remember reading somewhere that she was being courted for Steve McQueen's Widows, but chose to do Red Sparrow instead. So yeah. (Not that I'm complaining, though, because Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stone, Stewart and Elizabeth Debicki all did much better in their respective roles than I imagine Lawrence would've, much as I like her.)

The few films that Lawrence did star in from 2016 onwards are all over the place as well: Passengers is a bad screenplay and I don't know why she said yes to it; Red Sparrow is better than expected but still pretty forgettable and irresponsible in its portrayal of sexual violence; and as for the new X-Men, she's so obviously over the franchise and inert on screen that they're killing her off, so she'll probably be awful in that. mother! is the only choice of hers in all this time that I really can't fault; like it or not, it's the only project she's done recently that required her to take a risk and use her star power to get a challenging, ambitious film off the ground. 

Compare her trajectory in the past 6 years to that of people like Emma Stone and Saoirse Ronan, who have all of Lawrence's awards success but with far more impressive portfolios, more versatility, more ambition and far less duds. They've essentially replaced her as go-to 20-something A-list prestige actresses, and even Kristen Stewart (who was maligned as a horrible performer for years, and still is in most circles) managed to use her franchise clout to carve out a nice little indie/arthouse niche for herself. I'd honestly take Stewart's 2016 slate alone over Lawrence's entire 2013-2018 output. Hopefully this A24 project breathes some new life into Lawrence's career, because it needs it.

Her issue is clear to me. She’s taking way too much time in between projects that are underwhelming. She hasn’t done anything that’s excited audiences or really hit since American Hustle. She’s mainly just running on hype that her breakthrough provided at this point... On that front I don’t think we’ve really seen anyone happen with that sort of immediate success since Julia Roberts, who also had a several years of major flops and modest perfirmers in the 90’s. Difference is that she was probably more of a genuine draw and never took the sort of breaks Lawrence is doing.

I don’t buy for a second that Lawrence couldn’t get attached to a sure fire success or something with a more proven director. And that would probably be a bit more wise, but this is a pretty brave choice on paper (most of her recent choices have been darker and a lot more out there than I would’ve ever imagine for her) and I commend for her that. Kudos to her if it pans out, though I don’t think it will.

I'm actually curious about that.  There just aren't alot of meaty roles for women (young or old) in most of the films by top directors, with one of the glaring exceptions being Woody Allen, who'd be too much of a PR mess for her to work with post #metoo.  She might be better off doing some TV work, where there seems to be more good material.  Homecoming served Julia Roberts pretty well.