A full five years since showing up at Sundance with her stripped down addiction drama Sherrybaby, (for which Maggie Gyllenhaal received tons of accolades for) Laurie Collyer will be exploring some of the same dramatic terrain once again — her third film has begun lensing with the not too shabby pairing of Naomi Watts and Matt Dillon toplining the pic about a shipwrecked working class couple in distress. Sunlight Jr. will bask in a a rundown Florida backdrop with Original Media’s Charlie Corwin and Freight Yard Films’ Andrea Roa producing. A Park City showing in 2013 could be in the cards, but we expect this to be ready by mid to late 2012.
Gist: The film follows two have-nots who have fallen through the cracks of society. Hard-working convenience store clerk Melissa (Naomi Watts) and her paraplegic boyfriend, Richie (Matt Dillon), are trapped in a generational cycle of poverty and ignorance. They are genuinely excited when they learn that Melissa is pregnant. But when she loses her job and they are evicted from the motel where they live, things go from bad to worse.
Worth Noting: Before this was first mentioned as a Cinereach grant recipient in 2009, Collyer was working on Luna – a biopic based on the true story of tree squatter Julia “Butterfly” Hill with Rachel Weisz attached.
Do We Care?: Having written off Sherrybaby as a drama that didn’t have anything remotely interesting to say about the addiction process and we didn’t care much for the faux docu-aesthetic, but we can expect a bigger budget to help Collyer to deliver a more visually sound look and expect the veteran duo of actors to shine in the down and outs elements that the above described synopsis proposes.
