After his Dallas Buyers Club became one of the most critically lauded movies of 2o13, landing six Oscar nominations and winning two (for Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto’s performances), Jean-Marc Vallee quickly proved himself to be one of the most promising directors working today, and he looks set to return to the Oscar stage next year with Wild, a Reese Witherspoon-powered awards contender. How do you follow up two projects as impressive and intriguing as those? In Vallee’s case, he’s sticking to his guns with Demolition, a story of individuals struggling against seemingly insurmountable obstacles both internal and external.
Jake Gyllenhaal stars as “a young investment banker struggling to understand his emotional disconnect following the tragic death of his wife in an auto accident. As he tears apart his life in a distraught effort to see where he went wrong, he becomes obsessed with destruction.”
Now, thanks to TheWrap, we’ve learned that two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts (The Impossible, 21 Grams) is in negotiations to join Demolition, and if she does, she’ll be playing “a pot-smoking customer service representative for the company behind a vending machine that eats the protagonist’s money. Though she’s dating her own boss, she begins to fall for Gyllenhaal’s character as she learns of his pain and loss.”
The script by Bryan Sipe made the Black List back in 2007, and it certainly sounds like a gripping and emotionally involving story. Vallee previously spoke about his attraction to the project, calling it:
“A powerful and touching story, written with a strong and sincere desire to try to understand the human psyche, what makes us so unique, so special, what makes us love. This is a script of a rare quality, of a beautiful humanity.”
Watts is a very talented actress, so it’s great to see her come aboard. One of my main issues with Dallas Buyers Club was the ineffectuality of its lone female actress – Jennifer Garner as a sympathetic doctor – but it looks like Vallee, who directed The Young Victoria before Dallas Buyers Club, is more than set to again deliver some strong female protagonists with both Wild and Demolition.