Russo brothers’ next movie Cherry debuts on Apple TV+ March 12

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Cherry novel
Could this be the first Apple TV+ movie to win an Oscar?
Photo: Alfred A. Knopf

Cherry, a movie starring Tom Holland and Ciara Bravo, and directed by Avengers: Endgame helmers the Russo brothers, will debut on Apple TV+ on March 12.

A break from the Russo’s typical blockbuster fare (Endgame is the highest grossing movie of all time), Cherry is described by Vanity Fair as a “smaller, more intimate” movie, based on the bestselling 2018 novel of the same name by Nico Walker. This already has the makings of one of Apple TV+’s biggest hits of 2021.

Cherry has all the ingredients of a hit

Cherry is closely based on the real-life experiences of its author. It is about an unnamed protagonist who returns from fighting as a soldier in Iraq, gets addicted to the opiate Oxycontin, and then becomes a bank robber to pay for his addiction. In real life, the novel’s author has been in federal prison since 2013, with release set for this month.

The movie adaptation certainly sounds intriguing. Holland and Bravo’s lead roles have been heavily praised, and Vanity Fair‘s recent interview with co-director Joe Russo offers some tantalising details of the movie’s quasi-experimental design.

“[The protagonist] travels a great distance over a 15-year period,” Joe Russo said. “The movie’s broken up into six chapters that reflect those different periods, and each one has a different tone. It’s shot with different lenses, different production design. One’s got magical realism. Another chapter is absurdism. Another is horror…There’s a bit of gonzo in it. It’s raw in its tone. He’s a character in existential crisis.”

According to the Vanity Fair article, Cherry will be shown in theaters February 26. It will then arrive on Apple TV+ a couple of weeks later. (The theatrical run is likely more about making it eligible for awards, rather than pulling in loads of money. Who knows where theaters are going to be three months from now?)

Apple’s focusing on movies in a big, bad way

Apple TV+, despite its television-focused name, is picking up some pretty major movies. Some of these have already debuted on the streaming service, including the Samuel L. Jackson-starring The Banker and Tom Hanks’ Greyhound, alongside feature documentarys Boys State and Werner Herzog’s Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds.

Still to come are movies including Jake Gyllenhaal thriller Snow Blind, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro) and Antoine Fuqua’s Emancipation (with Will Smith).

Even with that stiff competition, however, Cherry sounds like it could be Apple’s most intriguing movie acquisition so far.

Source: Vanity Fair

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