Kitty Green’s portrait of an aspiring filmmaker working for a powerful, abusive media mogul is hitting theaters this winter. Deadline reports that Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Harvey Weinstein-inspired pic “The Assistant,” and will release the film January 31, 2020.
Recent Emmy winner Julia Garner stars as Jane, a new college grad who gets a coveted position as junior assistant to an industry legend. As expected, her duties include mundane tasks such as making coffee, ordering lunch, and adding paper to the copy machine. “But as Jane follows her daily routine, she, and we, grow increasingly aware of the abuse that insidiously colors every aspect of her work day, an accumulation of degradations against which Jane decides to take a stand, only to discover the true depth of the system into which she has entered,” the film’s synopsis hints.
As writer-director Green has said, the idea for “The Assistant” “sprang from a hybrid dark fiction project [she] was researching with students on consent and power at college campuses when the Weinstein story broke.” She recalled, “I was on my phone the whole time just reading all of this stuff. I mean, I felt like I have a close connection to people that worked for [Weinstein], and people that have experienced misconduct in the film industry, so immediately I shifted my focus to Hollywood, I guess, and the film industry, and that’s sort of where it began, and then I started interviewing and the research process,” Green explained.
The film premiered at Telluride in August. Abigail Disney and her startup studio, Level Forward, are among its exec producers.
“We’re so proud of this movie, both on its own terms as a cinematic experience and for how it contributes to the ongoing conversation about gender, power, and women’s roles in the workplace,” stated producer P. Jennifer Dana. “It is wonderful to have a partner in Bleecker Street who will support both Kitty as a filmmaker and help drive the necessary broader conversation surrounding the movie.”
As part of a partnership with The New York Women’s Foundation, 10 percent of “The Assistant’s” profits will support grantmaking for women-led, community-based organizations that promote the economic security, safety, and health of women and families in New York City, where the film was made.
Garner took home the Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Emmy for her turn in “Ozark.” You can catch her now in “Modern Love,” Amazon’s anthology series inspired by stories from The New York Times’ popular column. She’s in talks to topline Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix project about scammer Anna Delvey.
Green previously helmed feature docs “Casting JonBenet” and “Ukraine Is Not a Brothel.” She received the Venice Film Festival’s Lina Mangiacapre Award for the latter and won a Sundance Jury Prize for her documentary short “The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul.”
