Woody Allen’s “A Rainy Day in New York” will be released in North America, with the U.K.-based distributor Signature Entertainment eyeing to debut the film for North American audiences this fall.
Signature released “A Rainy Day in New York,” starring Timothée Chalamet and Elle Fanning, digitally on June 5 in the U.K. and has set a July 27 home video and DVD release. But the distributor had also previously acquired the film’s North American rights and is hoping to find a partner for a domestic release this fall.
Jon Bourdillon, who leads Signature, shared the news with Deadline on Wednesday. He clarified that the distributor was planning a theatrical rollout in the U.K. before the coronavirus canceled those plans, and the film does not expect to be released theatrically in North America under the present circumstances.
A representative for Signature Entertainment did not immediately reply to TheWrap’s request for comment.
“A Rainy Day in New York” was filmed in 2017, but Amazon dropped plans for the 2018 release of the film after Allen’s daughter Dylan Farrow resurfaced accusations that he molested her in the early 1990s when she was 7. Allen, who was never charged with a crime after two separate police investigations in the 1990s, has repeatedly called the accusations a “total fabrication,” including in a new memoir “Apropos of Nothing” published earlier this year.
Bourdillon told Deadline that the results of the investigations into Allen factored into their decision to work with him, where others, including the cast of “A Rainy Day in New York,” have distanced themselves from him.
“We didn’t speak to any of our clients about how they’d feel about it, because our view was that this man hasn’t been charged with anything and he has always contested any claims made against him,” Bourdillon told Deadline. “We took a view that it would have been inappropriate to refuse to deal with him. There are other people in the business who have been charged with various things in the past and their films are in distribution. We are a film distributor. When a piece of entertainment comes to us that we think will be of interest to the UK public we plug that gap from moviemaking to home entertainment.”
“A Rainy Day in New York” has also already opened in a number of other territories theatrically ahead of the coronavirus pandemic and has seen some success in digital release. Worldwide the movie has grossed $21 million theatrically, including over $4 million in France.
The story is a romantic comedy of college sweethearts, Gatsby (Chalamet) and Ashleigh (Fanning), whose plans for a romantic weekend together in New York City are dashed as quickly as the sunlight turns into showers. When Ashleigh gets an assignment from the school paper to interview celebrated film director Roland Pollard (Liev Schreiber) in Manhattan, Gatsby seizes the opportunity to show Arizona-bred Ashleigh his favorite haunts in his home city. “A Rainy Day in new York” also stars Jude Law and Selena Gomez.
Allen has also completed another film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” which he shot last summer in Spain and that is set to open the San Sebastian Film Festival in September. The film is another romantic comedy written and directed by Allen and stars Elena Anaya, Louis Garrel, Gina Gershon, Sergi López, Wallace Shawn and Christoph Waltz.