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| COURTESY OF THE VENICE FILM FESTIVAL |
Paramount+ has picked up Academy Award winning-director William Friedkin’s last film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial for all international territories where the service is currently live, the company announced Sunday. That includes the United States, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, Australia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France and South Korea. However, for the United States, there will be a branding difference: It's going to be a Showtime film.
The film, Friedkin's last writing and directorial effort, is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Hermon Wouk, just had its world premiere at the 80th Venice Film Festival Sunday night. It stars Kiefer Sutherland, who stars on the service's series Rabbit Hole, Jason Clarke, Jake Lacy, Monica Raymund, Lewis Pullman, Jay Duplass, Tom Riley and the late Lance Reddick.
In The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Clarke plays Barney Greenwald, a skeptical lawyer for the navy who reluctantly agrees to defend Lt. Steve Maryk, played by Lacy, a First Officer facing court-martial for taking over the U.S.S. Caine from its authoritarian captain, Sutherland's Lt. Philip Francis Queeg during a violent storm while at sea. As the trial goes on, Greenwald's concern grows, beginning to questions if the events at hand were a true mutiny or simply the courageous acts of a group of sailors who could no longer trust their increasingly unstable leader.
Friedkin died on August 7, weeks shy of his 88th birthday, and was best known for directing films such as The Exorcist and The French Connection. His last scripted film prior to Court-Martial was 2011's Matthew McConaughey-starrer Killer Joe. In a way, this marks a return to Showtime for the director, as he directed a remake of 12 Angry Men for the network, which premiered in August 1997. It earned him an Emmy nomination. He'd also directed two episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which reunited him with his To Live and Die In L.A. star William Petersen: season 8's "Cockroaches" and the 200th episode the next season "Mascara".
Showtime's acquisition of the film, produced under Paramount Global’s newly-revived Republic Pictures label, continues one of its latest directives to dive back into making television films, like Heist 88 in a few weeks, after a long time away focusing on original series.
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