The 2021 Amy Adams movie that was delayed to make it less terrible: “We wanted to make it better”
As much as we all love Amy Adams, her track record is far from spotless.
As Lois Lane in the failed DC Extended Universe, she is at least partially responsible for some of the worst superhero movies ever made, and, it may come as a surprise, but there was a sequel to Cruel Intentions, and she was part of it.
One of Adams’ projects that failed to reach its potential was 2021’s Joe Wright-directed The Woman in the Window, which starred the redhead actor as Dr Anna Fox, a child psychologist who suffers from crippling agoraphobia (fear of public spaces) that keeps her confined to her apartment. As a result, Fox starts spying on her neighbours and discovers horrifying secrets about them.
The film underwent a troubled development cycle, which began with the initial production at 20th Century Fox, going for a toss when the company was purchased by Disney. Its theatrical release was delayed to May 2020, before, you know, the contagion hit the world, and so the pandemic forced it onto Netflix, where its all-star cast (Adams, Gary Oldman, Julianne Moore, and more) attracted a large number of viewers.
Unfortunately, critics weren’t massively impressed, and it was one of many flops Adams experienced around this time, forcing her to reconsider some of her career options.
When discussing the movie’s delayed release, Elizabeth Gabler, the head of Fox 2000 Pictures, blamed the source material on which it was based, explaining, “We’re dealing with a complex novel. We tested the movie really early for that very reason. We wanted to make it better, and we’ve had Disney’s full support in doing that.”
Released in 2018, The Woman in the Window was Daniel Mallory’s hit debut novel, published under the pen name AJ Finn, which climbed all the way to the top of the New York Times bestseller list and scored a nomination at the British Book Awards, but everything soon unravelled when it was revealed that Mallory had repeatedly lied to the public about his life, with allegations including false claims about beating cancer and his brother committing suicide, all of which severely damaged his reputation and might also explain why the movie was pushed back.
Plenty of novels have been deemed ‘unadaptable’, even the likes of The Lord of the Rings and Dune, which were once thought to be unfilmable, but now represent two of the biggest franchises in cinematic history. In that sense, The Woman in the Window isn’t some sprawling fantasy epic or post-modern genre-bender, but seemingly a fairly standard thriller, which makes Gabler’s claim that the story was too ‘complex’ for the screen simply fall flat.
The Woman in the Window was just too bland to be worth all this effort, and while it’s not the worst film you’ll ever see, given the talent involved, it should have turned out a lot better than it did.
