Amazon/MGM Studios has decided to release Ron Howard’s “Alone at Dawn,” starring Adam Driver and Anne Hathaway, on December 25, 2027.
This is the adaptation of the nonfiction book by Dan Schilling and Lori Longfritz that I wrote about a few weeks back. It wrapped production in February and has been in post-production ever since. The film test-screened a few months ago.
Some wondered whether it might arrive this year, but its absence from the fall festivals and the continued lack of a release date suggested Amazon/MGM might be holding it for next year, and our assumptions were correct.
Driver, a former Marine and Oscar-nominated actor, has finally found a military-themed project that feels like a full-circle moment in his career. He plays John Chapman, an Air Force combat controller who gave his life during the War in Afghanistan while saving 23 fellow service members—a sacrifice that earned him a posthumous Medal of Honor.
The screenplay was written by TV veteran Michael Russell Gunn (“The Newsroom”), with earlier drafts contributed by Erin Cressida Wilson (“Secretary”) and Amy Herzog (“Scenes from a Marriage”).
Amazon/MGM has reportedly been testing two cuts of the film, with audience response said to be very strong. Could that be why the studio is holding it? Amazon/MGM appears to be quite bullish on the Oscar prospects of “Project Hail Mary” and “I Play Rocky,” and may simply want to give Howard’s film a proper awards-season runway rather than have it compete with those two titles.
For Howard, “Alone at Dawn” follows his struggle to find a distributor for his last film, “Eden,” which was finally released theatrically by Vertical last August. It also arrives five years after Amazon/MGM dumped his well-received “Thirteen Lives” onto Prime Video.
Howard, who wowed Oscar voters with “Apollo 13,” “A Beautiful Mind,” and “Frost/Nixon,” and impressed me with “Cinderella Man”—still his best film—hasn’t had a commercial hit since 2013’s “Rush.” Has his stock crumbled? Not quite yet. Teaming up with Driver and Hathaway is a big deal, and “Alone at Dawn” could be the film that reminds audiences—and Hollywood—of what he can still do.
This is the adaptation of the nonfiction book by Dan Schilling and Lori Longfritz. It wrapped production in February and has been in post-production ever since. The film test-screened a few months ago.