‘Nickel Boys’ & ‘The Last Showgirl’ Land As Awards Season Hopefuls Rev Up Indie Market – Specialty Preview

Jill Goldsmith
·5-min read

With just a few weeks left in 2024, notable films continue to land with Nickel Boys and The Last Showgirl officially jumping into awards season — the former already a two-time winner at the first stop, the Gotham Awards. A few big indie stories are yet to be told, with Babygirl and A Complete Unknown hitting for Christmas, making it possible to opine definitively on the year’s improving indie film market. The Brutalist, also being widely recognized this season, opens next week.

Nickel Boys by RaMell Ross from Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures is the much-nominated film based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. It opens at two NYC theaters (Angelika Film Center, AMC Lincoln Square) with an LA expansion Dec. 20, adding other markets into January.

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The gripping film is writer/director Ross’s narrative debut after his acclaimed 2018 documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening. It world-premiered at Telluride (see Deadline review) and opened the New York Film Festival. Awards and nominations include AFI Top Ten Films of the Year, Gotham Awards for Best Director and Breakthrough Performer for Brandon Wilson, a Golden Globes Best Motion Picture Drama nomination, and multiple honors from the AAFCA, NYFCC, and LAFCA.

A Plan B Entertainment, Anonymous Content, Louverture Films production. Ross penned the screenplay with Louverture’s Joslyn Barnes.

Inspired by real-life events, Nickel Boys chronicles the bond between two Black teenagers played by Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson who become wards of a juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow-era Florida. As truths unfold, their profound friendship offers transformation and awakens hope. Cast includes Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor.

Roadside Attractions’ Gia Coppola-directed The Last Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson debuts at one location, LA’s AMC Century City, for a week-long Academy run. Roadside says pre-sales are strong for all screenings — both with and without a Anderson Q&A. It will be reporting grosses, which is welcome but unusual for an Academy run. Opens Jan. 10 at about 750 theaters.

The film premiered at TIFF, Deadline review here. Anderson, who catapulted to fame on the 1990s NBC series Baywatch, saw a Best Performance Golden Globe nomination. She shines as a glamorous but aging Vegas showgirl who must plan for her future when her show abruptly closes after a 30-year run.

Written by Kate Gersten. Also starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Dave Bautista, Billie Lourd, Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song. Produced by Robert Schwartzman, Natalie Farrey and Gia Coppola.

The film’s “Beautiful That Way,” sung by pop superstar Miley Cyrus, produced by Academy Award nominee Andrew Wyatt and written by Wyatt, Cyrus and Lykke Li, nabbed a Golden Globes Best Original Song – Motion Picture nom.

GVN Releasing is out with historical drama The Performance starring Jeremy Piven and directed by Shira Piven. Written by Shira Piven and Josh Salzberg based on a short story by Arthur Miller. Premiered in Rome. Deadline review here. Theater count forthcoming.

Set against 1937 Fascist Germany, Harold May (Piven) is an American Jew and gifted tap dancer nearly past his prime but still hungry for success. While on tour in Europe, Harold and his troupe are scouted by a German attaché. Not knowing the blond-haired May is Jewish, he offers them a huge sum to perform one show in Berlin, which turns out to be an exclusive performance for Hitler himself. Piven recently told Deadline’s Contender’s LA that he’s been working for 15 years to get the film made after his mother steered him to the story in a New Yorker article — giving him time to practice his tap dancing.

The Colors Within from GKIDS is out with an Academy Run at the Royal in LA for the animated adventure from director Naoko Yamada (A Silent Voice).

Opens Jan. 24 in moderate release. The distributor is putting A Silent Voice, a fan favorite, back in about 185 theaters this Sunday and Monday as a lead up.

Totsuko is a high school student with the ability to see the ‘colors’ of others. Colors of bliss, excitement, and serenity, plus a color she treasures as her favorite. Kimi, a classmate at her school, gives off the most beautiful color of all. They form band with Rui, a quiet music enthusiast they meet at a used bookstore in a far corner of town, forging friendship and stirring affection.

Relativity opens horror The Man In The White Van on 533 screens. This is a true-crime, Hitchcockian thriller about an ominous white van that begins stalking a young girl in an idyllic town in 1970s Florida. Written and directed by Warren Skeels, it stars Sean Astin, Ali Larter, Madison Wolfe, Brec Bassinger and Skai Jackson.

Film Forum is screening the U.S. theatrical premiere of Werner Herzog’s 2022 documentary Theater Of Thought.

After 50+ years exploring the far corners of the world, the director focuses inward — on the human brain, via the cutting-edge field of neuroscience, with its attendant ethical quandaries. Joined by Columbia professor Rafael Yuste (the film’s science advisor), the two cross the country querying innovators in cerebral research and bioethics: Can computers help people communicate telepathically? How can the brain be stimulated to curb depression, pain, or the effects of Parkinson’s? Is thought thought control possible?

The film had its world premiere at Telluride in 2022 and went on to screen at TIFF and DOC NYC, where Herzog was awarded the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Distributor Argot Pictures has set a handful of screening across the country through March.

MORE TO COME…

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