The Daily Wire revealed details Tuesday of "Confession," its under-the-radar prestige drama set in Stalin's 1938 Moscow, written by Ben Shapiro and starring Rob Lowe, James Franco, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Nick Nolte, with a world premiere at the Warsaw Film Festival on October 15. According to Deadline.
The release window is the whole joke: 100 U.S. theaters for one night on November 11, the same day it lands on the Daily Wire's own streaming platform. The one-night window is a ceremony, a thing awards-season films do to tick a box before they stream. The Daily Wire runs it as the premiere. The festival is the red carpet, the theatrical run is the press check, and the actual product is on the company's own app.
The cast list is what a media company can buy with the dialect of prestige: a Czech Holocaust-film director, 35mm, an Oscar-winning makeup department, and names that read like an A-list resume. Shapiro's statement calls it "deeply rooted in faith, morality, virtue," which is a press release wearing a period costume.
The timing is the tell. The company's two previous films, one with Jonathan Majors and one with Danny Trejo, both shut down under controversy. The Trejo saga alone is a story: his son says the actor was "handcuffed to this stupid project." Now the company shows up at a European film festival with its starriest cast to date. The PR machine does not stop, it just changes venue.
YOUR TURN: Is one night in 100 theaters a release, or is it a receipt?
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