Last month, I reported some surprising, but VERY welcome news from Los Angeles. Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers” was test-screened to positive reactions. As someone had told me, it was a total return to form for Payne in what was being described as a smaller-scaled film.
Now Deadline is reporting that a private screenings will occur at TIFF for “The Holdovers” and the plan might be a possible late-December release to qualify for Oscars:
I hear that the hot title is one that isn’t officially on the for-sale lists, but I expect it to be a big deal. That is The Holdovers, a Christmas-themed film that reteams Alexander Payne with Paul Giamatti for the first time since the wine country saga Sideways. Sources tell me that there will be a screening for distributors this weekend (Miramax is at the center of this one with CAA Media Finance), and it’s very possible that one of the usual suspects will step up and put this film in the awards season race late in the year.
Filming on “The Holdovers” began in Massachusetts on January 27, 2022 and there were some reshoots in late April. I was under the impression that they might wait this one out until Cannes 2023, and maybe they still will.
“The Holdovers” has Payne reuniting with his “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti. Giamatti will play a “curmudgeonly walleyed disliked history teacher” who has to deal with the only student of his, a holdover, who remains in town for Christmas, as all the other students have left to see their families for the holidays.
Payne is coming off the biggest misfire of his career, 2017’s “Downsizing,” which was met with tepid box-office and mixed reviews. Before that, the 60-year-old filmmaker had built up a reputation as the primary humanist of contemporary American cinema with films such as “Citizen Ruth,” “ Election,” “About Schmidt,” and “Nebraska.”