While things are definitely not out of the woods yet, the film industry has begun to rebound amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of high-profile projects have begun to reschedule their release dates – or have found ways of reaching viewers without them needing to leave their homes, whether through hybrid releases, early debuts on VOD, or going entirely onto streaming. The Woman in the Window, the long-awaited thriller starring Amy Adams, is one of the latest to go into that third category, announcing in August that it will be foregoing a theatrical release and debuting on Netflix. A new report from Entertainment Weekly sheds a bit more light on the release, revealing that it will be hitting the streaming platform sometime this summer.
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“I’m very interested to see how people respond to the film and I can’t wait for its release,” director Joe Wright reveals in the report. “What I hope people will take away from this is a sense that our own fears can incarcerate us. And this is a story about a woman who manages to overcome her own fears, and leave them behind her.”
The Woman in the Window follows Dr. Anna Fox (Amy Adams), an agoraphobic psychologist befriends a neighbor across the street from her New York City brownstone, only to see her own life turned upside down when the woman disappears and she suspects foul play.
This comes after a slew of release woes that had previously plagued The Woman in the Window, which is the final movie from the now-defunct Fox 2000 production company. It was initially scheduled to debut on October 4th of 2018, but was delayed months prior after Walt Disney Studios, which purchased 20th Century Fox in early 2019, wanted to “retool” the film. This retooling was due to a bad reception among early test audiences, who were reportedly confused by the film’s third-act reveal and other psychologically-driven plot points.
“Oh my God,” Wright says in the new interview. “There were some plot points that people found a bit confusing — I would say possibly too opaque maybe,” he concedes of the initial test screenings that led to the much-discussed reshoots. “So we had to go back and clarify certain points, but I think also we tried to make sure we didn’t oversimplify anything and make things too clear. There’s an enjoyment in not knowing what’s going on, but at the same time, you have to give the audience something to hold on to — you have to lead them through the labyrinth of mystery and fear.”
The Woman in the Window was then scheduled to be released on May 15th of 2020, but was subsequently delayed until later this year due to the pandemic.
The Woman in the Window also stars Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Fred Hechinger, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julianne Moore, Jeanine Serralles, Mariah Bozeman, Liza Colon-Zayas, and Tracy Letts. It is directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Hanna), and is based on the novel of the same name by A.J. Finn, a pen named used by controversial editor and author Daniel Malloy.
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