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Searchlight‘s recent pick-up of Mona Fastvold’s Shaker architect movie, The Testament of Ann Lee, will be hitting select theaters on Dec. 25 with a 70MM cut.
The dating gives star Amanda Seyfried two movies during the holiday corridor, the other being the Lionsgate Paul Feig directed thriller, The Housemaid, in which she stars with Sydney Sweeney. The Housemaid opens on Dec. 19.
Deadline just reported that Searchlight acquired the Venice film festival premiere title starring Seyfried as the mother of the Shaker movement, the Disney specialty label taking North America and most of the world.
Oscar nominee Fastvold co-wrote the movie with her 3x Oscar nominee Brutalist partner, Brady Corbet, and produced it with him as well. The couple make thrifty period epic films, ala Brutalist, this one cost $10M-$11M, with the acquisition price in the mid-to-high seven figures.
The movie follows the Shakers’ irrepressible leader — who espoused gender and social equality while believing herself to be the female incarnation of Christ. The movie features more than a dozen original Shaker hymns which are transformed into ecstatic “movements,” with choreography from Celia Rowlson-Hall(Vox Lux) and music by Oscar-winningcomposer Daniel Blumberg (The Brutalist).
Ann Lee also received a premiere at TIFF with the first wave of critics on Rotten Tomatoes given the pic a 91% fresh rating.
Ann Lee joins such Christmas Day releases as A24’s Marty Supreme (wide) starring Timothee Chalamet, Sony’s reboot of Anaconda, Focus Features’ wide entry of Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson’s Song Sung Blue, Sony Pictures Classics NY and LA release of The Choral, and NEON’s limited release of Park Chan Wok title No Other Choice. Everything bows in the wake of 20th Century Studios’ Avatar: The Way of Water on Dec. 19.
Watch our TIFF interview with Fastvold and star Seyfried above.
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