'Jane Got A Gun' Gets New 2016 Release Date

Jane Got a Gun, starring Natalie Portman, is a western thriller about a woman defending herself and her home from violent attack, but the film itself seems like it has been a lot more vulnerable than Jane herself. Now, after a significant delay — the film shot in 2013 — there's finally a Jane Got a Gun release date that might stick, as the film is on the Weinstein Company calendar for February 2016.

Jane's problems go all the way back to the film's pre-production, when original co-star Michael Fassbender had to leave the production. Then, on the first day of shooting, original director Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) left the production. She was quickly followed by Jude Law.

Gavin O'Connor (Warrior) stepped in to direct the movie, and the film's supporting cast ended up including Ewan McGregor, Joel Edgerton, and Rodrigo Santoro.

But that was only the beginning of the movie's problems. Jane Got a Gun was set to be jointly distributed by Relativity and The Weinstein Company, and Relativity's financial troubles and general shakiness led to several release date shifts. The movie was originally set for August 2014, then February 2015, then September 4, before Relativity's bankruptcy finally pulled the movie off the release calendar altogether.

So now Variety reports that the Weinsteins have set the movie for a February 2016 release, without a specific date set. The film will open in some countries in Europe in November of this year. The wrangling that helped The Weinstein Company extricate the rights to the film from the ashes of Relativity could be a whole piece in and of itself, but for now the important factor is that the deal is done.

I still harbor hope for the film, although some of that is linked to the now long-outdated idea of Lynne Ramsay making a western with Natalie Portman. That's not what this film is any longer, and hasn't been for years now. Still, this one has been the object of news and curiosity for so long that there's no way we would miss the movie now, whatever it turned out to be in the final edit.

Of course, The Weinstein Company is the distributor least likely to stick to a release date, so just because they've penciled the film in for an early 2016 release doesn't mean we'll actually see it then. The company pulled this week's release of About Ray just days before the movie was supposed to come out, after all.

Jane Got a Gun is based on a Black List script written by Brian Duffield, with rewrites by Anthony Tambakis. Here's the official synopsis:

Natalie Portman stars as Jane, who rebuilds her life with new husband Bill (Noah Emmerich) after being tormented by an outlaw gang led by Collin (Ewan McGregor). But things get ugly again when the husband has a fresh run-in with the gang, leaving Jane little choice but to ask her ex-fiance (Joel Edgerton) for help.