Last year, I dedicated a couple of posts to the mysterious case of “Margaret,” Kenneth Lonergan’s seemingly terminally delayed follow-up to his 2000 directorial debut “You Can Count on Me.” The film, a character drama starring Anna Paquin as a traumatised witness to a bus accident, with Mark Ruffalo and Matt Damon in support, was shot in 2005 — but has been stuck in the editing suite ever since.
Working from a vast, ambitious 168-page script, Lonergan has reportedly been unable in four years to complete a cut of the film that pleases him. (This extensive LA Times report details the financial and legal consequences of his creative blockage.) However, just as the issue had slipped from memory — with many assuming the film would never be released at all — Anne Thompson dropped this brief but encouraging update from distributor Fox Searchlight a few days ago:
Searchlight states: “we do have a finished cut by Lonergan and we plan to release the film sometime in 2011.”