Psychological thriller The Woman in the Window has had its release date pushed back to 2020 from its scheduled release date of October 4, following the decision to rework its structure. Based on a novel of the same name, the story follows a child psychologist who has become housebound due to suffering from agoraphobia, and spends her time spying her neighbors. While watching a seemingly perfect family who have just moved in, she witnesses a violent crime in their home but is torn over whether or not to call the police, since she is unable to trust herself enough to be certain of what she saw.
The film was in production by Fox 2000, a production house for mid-range independent fare compared to the more commercially oriented 20th Century Fox, but since the completion of the merger between Disney and Fox, the company has been deemed surplus to requirements and is set to be dissolved. The Woman in the Window will be the studio’s swansong, capping off a steady series of varied output ranging from kids’ films like the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Alvin and the Chipmunks series, to serious awards fare such as The Thin Red Line, The Devil Wears Prada, Life of Pi and Bridge of Spies.
The news of The Woman in the Window’s delay came from THR. Early test screenings of the film reportedly confused audiences, which may not have come as much of a surprise given that much of the story is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator crippled by mental illness, and was tested earlier for precisely this reason. Director Joe Wright is planning five days of pickups next month, once the schedule of star Amy Adams is clear, with the intent of reworking the story’s more complicated aspects into something audiences will better be able to understand.
The source novel, compared to the likes of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, was written by A.J. Finn, a pseudonym of Dan Mallory, a book editor with a reputation of being deceptive about his personal history and lying about his previous work to better further his career. It was adapted by Tracy Letts, a playwright best known for adaptations of his own stage productions Killer Joe, August: Osage County and Bug, and as well as Adams the film will star Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore, Brian Tyree Henry, Wyatt Russell and Anthony Mackie.
Although test screenings and reshoots are sometimes thought to be an indication of a troubled production, in reality they are nothing unusual. It makes sense for studios to want to be sure that their end product will be marketable, and some reshoots merely tweak a film to get it closer to perfection, some attempt to salvage a certain failure, and others completely change it from the original version. Although The Woman in the Window is an unusual case given that it effectively changed owners while being made and is a production of a studio soon to cease existing, the decision to delay release and retool the film seems to have been largely down to the reception of test screenings rather than studio politicking. Nobody wants to release a film that has little chance of any kind of success (except perhaps Uwe Boll), and it can only be assumed that the changes being made to the story will ultimately make for a better film.
Source: THR