Woody Allen’s 49th film as writer-director, “A Rainy Day in New York,” put in the can in 2018, never came out in the States due to Allen being axed via 25-year-old #MeToo allegations, which he still fervently denies. The film was completed in 2018, but its distributor, Amazon Studios, halted the release of the film following the controversy.
Suffice to say, no U.S. distributor wanted to touch ‘Rainy Day’ (the film was originally part of the Amazon deal that Allen had signed with them). And so, cinephiles were left with the choice of illegally downloading the damn thing, which is obviously far better than the other option, which is just never seeing it. Thank you, internet.
Europe seems to have had no problem with the film, as it’s already opened in France, Portugal, Austria, Germany, U.K, Norway, Sweden Poland, Lithuania, Greece, Netherlands, Turkey, France, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain, and Mexico.
However, the wokest countries in the world (the U.S, and the U.K.) decided to abstain and boycott Allen’s latest. You see, Woody is still toxic to the woke tyrannicals in these countries. However, thanks to Signature Entertainment, the UK-based home release distributor, it appears that the U.S. could finally be getting Allen’s film
Speaking to Deadline, Signature Entertainment CCO Jon Bourdillon spoke about how he held no reservations working with Allen:
“No. The man has not been charged with anything,” explained Bourdillon. “We discussed it in the office. We didn’t speak to any of our clients about how they’d feel about it, because our view was that this man hasn’t been charged with anything and he has always contested any claims made against him. We took a view that it would have been inappropriate to refuse to deal with him. There are other people in the business who have been charged with various things in the past and their films are in distribution. We are a film distributor. When a piece of entertainment comes to us that we think will be of interest to the UK public we plug that gap from moviemaking to home entertainment.”
He added, “I can understand how larger companies with more employees and more complex structures might arrive at a different decision, but our management team didn’t feel that it was inappropriate and Woody’s people were delighted to find us as a partner.”
He also confirmed that a North American release of ‘Rainy Day’ is in the works.
“The conversations we’ve had so far with a few platforms and distributors have been positive,” he said. “At the moment, there is little new content being made available so there is a demand for starry, romantic-comedies, in particular.”
Could Netflix take a chance on the film? Highly unlikely as the backlash would be too overwhelming.
Meanwhile, Allen has a new movie coming out this fall titled “Rifkin’s Festival.” Shot in San Sebastian, Spain, the film stars Christoph Waltz, Gina Gershon, Wallace Shawn, Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel, and Sergi Lopez. Tripictures has picked up the film for a fall release in Spain, and it is also now set to premiere at the San Sebastián Film Festival on September 18th as the opening night film of that event.
It gives me no pleasure to report that this is one of the worst films of Schrader’s career. Wooden acting, Jack Huston and Sofia Boutella are badly miscast, the script is dull, the photography is flat; nothing works.