Reichardt ‘Cutoff’ From Cannes? Kazan Expects Oregon Trail Period Film in 2011

Will one of our most anticipated films for 2010 calender year, end up being pushed back to 2011? If you go by what Zoe Kazan is saying (she’s on the junket tour for Bradley Rust Gray’s The Exploding Girl), it would appear so. ThePlaylist, god love them for digging and piecing together kernels of information on the webs, found out some rather disappointing news…despite having completed filming late last year, Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff isn’t likely to premiere in Cannes (I was expecting to) but if my math skills are up to par and we remain optimistic, my thinking is that she’ll most likely be finished editing time for Venice & Toronto. Kelly if you happen to read this, let me know where to send the cases of energy drinks.

Starring Michelle Williams (Wendy & Lucy), Kazan and her boyfriend actor Paul Dano (who recently starred in Gray’s wife’s (So Young Kim) For Ellen, this is set in 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, where a wagon team of three families has hired the mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a short cut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, only to become lost in the dry rock and sage. Over the coming days, the emigrants must face the scourges of hunger, thirst, and their own lack of faith in each other’s instincts for survival. When a Native American wanderer crosses their path, the emigrants are torn between their trust in a guide who has proven himself unreliable and a man who has always been seen as the natural enemy.

Reichardt is reportedly working on a Western themed project after this is completed, I’m sure she picked up some survivals from having filmed a 1845 set piece in the desert.