Jennifer Lawrence is without a doubt the most popular actor in the world right now. Ever since her Oscar-nominated breakthrough in 2010’s Winter’s Bone, Lawrence has been steadily building one of the most impressive Hollywood careers in recent memory. Her headlining of the massively successful Hunger Games franchise and well-deserved Oscar win for Silver Linings Playbook cemented her position as the biggest star in the world. Her Playbook co-star Bradley Cooper is not far behind Lawrence in terms of industry respect and commercial popularity. When it was announced that the two would be reuniting to play the lead roles in Susanne Bier’s adaptation of Ron Rash’s 2008 novel Serena, the critical and commercial expectations for the film went through the roof. But then we didn’t hear anything about the film for quite a while, which did not bode well.
But never fear! We now have the first official trailer and posters for the film, and it looks like it could live up to its lofty ambitions. The trailer suggests that Lawrence and Cooper still have the incredible chemistry that made Playbook such a hit, although their relationship in Serena is nothing like the heart-warming romance in that earlier film. It will be great to see these two incredible actors tackling some darker material, and it will be interesting to see whether they can both shake their lovable personas to play two seemingly unlovable characters.
Here’s the synopsis for the film:
Newlyweds George (Cooper) and Serena Pemberton (Lawrence) travel from Boston to the North Carolina mountains where they begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon shows herself to be the equal of any man: overseeing crews, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. Together, this king and queen rule their dominion, killing or vanquishing all who stand in the way of their ambitions. After Serena learns that she can never bear a child, she sets out to murder the woman who bore George a son before his marriage. And when she starts to suspect that George is protecting his illegitimate family, the Pembertons’ intense, passionate marriage will begin to unravel as the story moves toward its shocking reckoning.
Have a look at the trailer and posters here:
Serena will be released in Australian cinemas on November 27.
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