Movies that open the New York Film Festival tend to pick up Oscars, too.
Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn’s best-selling murder-mystery-with-a-twist, has been adapted into a film directed by Golden-Globe-winning director David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fight Club) and is now set to open the 52nd Annual New York Film Festival on September 26th. The film stars English actress Rosamund Pike as Amy Elliott Dunne, and Ben Affleck (the newest and most controversial incarnation of Batman) as her maybe-a-murderer husband Nick Dunne. Tony-Award-winning actor Neil Patrick Harris makes an appearance as Amy’s wealthy-slash-obsessed friend Desi Collings, and Emily Ratajkowski (the stunning brunette from Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines video) plays Nick’s extramarital fling.
The New York Film Festival began in 1962, and boasts an impressive roster of opening films, including Chariots of Fire (1981), Pulp Fiction (1994), and Life of Pi (2012). Of the 51 films that have opened the festival, 25 have been nominated for at least one Academy Award; Fincher’s hit film The Social Network kicked off the festival in 2010, and was nominated for eight Oscars in 2011, bagging three of them (Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Original Score). It remains to be seen if Fincher can make a killing with Flynn’s who-Dunne-it during the 2015 awards season.
