Family drama “Fireflies in the Garden” has finally been set for a domestic release on Oct. 14 in Los Angeles and New York.
The Julia Roberts-Ryan Reynolds starrer will be self-distribbed by the filmmakers — three years after it screened at the Berlin Film Festival.
“Fireflies,” which also stars Willem Dafoe, Hayden Panettiere, Emily Watson, Carrie-Anne Moss, Shannon Lucio and Ioan Gruffudd, was produced by Senator Entertainment in association with Kulture Machine. It was released in 2008 in several European markets, but Senator shut down operations in 2009.
Semiautobiographical story, written and directed by Dennis Lee, centers on the complexities of love and commitment in a family torn apart when faced by an unexpected tragedy.
Dafoe portrays a tenured professor on track to become university president while his son, played by Reynolds, is a well-known romance novelist. Roberts plays the family’s matriarch.
Lee won a student Academy Award for his short “Jesus Henry Christ” and was inspired to write the drama after his mother’s death in 2002.
The producers regained rights to the film recently and plan to release “Fireflies” in one or two venues in Los Angeles and New York initially, with hopes to expand. Lee told Variety the new cut runs 85 minutes and is closer to his original director’s cut.
“I am so pleased our film will finally get a theatrical release in the U.S.,” Lee said. “Anyone familiar with our story knows the road to this moment has been paved with challenges. It’s not lost on me how much care and determination it took to bring ‘Fireflies’ to light.”
Producers are Marco Weber, Vanessa Coifman, Sukee Chew and Philip Rose; Jere Hausfater and Milton Liu exec produced.
