The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced that David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” will make its world premiere as the opening night selection for the upcoming 52nd New York Film Festival (September 26 – October 12), which will kick off at Alice Tully Hall and return to Tavern on the Green for the after party. Based upon the global best seller by Gillian Flynn, and starring Academy Award winner Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, and Tyler Perry, “Gone Girl” marks Fincher’s return to the festival since "The Social Network," the 2010 Opening Night Gala selection. The 20th Century Fox and New Regency release is due in theaters on October 3, 2014.
New York Film Festival director and Selection Committee chair, Kent Jones said: “‘Gone Girl’ is so many things at once: sharp as a razor about many aspects of American life that have been untouched by movies, very tough and just as funny, brilliantly acted, and 100% entertaining—a wild ride from start to finish. In short, a great American movie based on a literary phenomenon, directed by one of the best filmmakers alive.”
David Fincher’s film version of Gillian Flynn’s phenomenally successful best seller (adapted by the author) is one wild cinematic ride, a perfectly cast and intensely compressed portrait of a recession-era marriage contained within a devastating depiction of celebrity/media culture, shifting gears as smoothly as a Maserati 250F. Ben Affleck is Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing on the day of their fifth anniversary. Neil Patrick Harris is Amy’s old boyfriend Desi, Carrie Coon (who played Honey in Tracy Letts’s acclaimed production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) is Nick’s sister Margo, Kim Dickens (“Treme,” “Friday Night Lights”) is Detective Rhonda Boney, and Tyler Perry is Nick’s superstar lawyer Tanner Bolt. "Gone Girl" is at once a grand panoramic vision of middle America, a uniquely disturbing exploration of the fault lines in a marriage, and a comedy that starts pitch black and only gets blacker.
The 52nd NYFF also marks the return to Tavern on the Green, a longtime destination for the evening’s after party, which came to an end when it closed in 2009. In May, owners Jim Caiola and David Salama reopened this New York landmark, decorated to evoke the original Victorian Gothic structure.
The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FSLC director of programming; Marian Masone, FSLC sr. programming advisor; Gavin Smith, editor-in-chief, Film Comment; and Amy Taubin, contributing editor, Film Comment and Sight & Sound.
NYFF previously announced the retrospective, Joseph L. Mankiewicz: The Essential Iconoclast, to take place during this year’s festival, as well as initial selections in the Revivals section of the festival to include “Burroughs: The Movie,” “The Color of Pomegranates,” “Hiroshima Mon Amour,” and “Once Upon a Time in America.”
Tickets for the 52nd New York Film Festival will go on sale to the general public at noon on Sunday, September 7. Becoming a Film Society member before July 31 provides access to a pre-sale period for single tickets to festival screenings and events ahead of the general public on-sale date. Subscription packages and VIP passes to NYFF52 give the buyer the earliest access to tickets and are on sale through July 31.
