Woody Allen giveth, and Woody Allen continue to giveth, even when Amazon would rather he didn’t. Take a gander at the trailer for A Rainy Day in New York, the movie at the center of the director’s $68 million lawsuit against the company. It looks like pretty standard Woody Allen fare, complete with tweed blazers, old men flirting with younger women, and general uptown mania. Undergraduate lovebirds Elle Fanning and Timothée Chalamet think they’re in for a romantic weekend when they hop on a Greyhound bus to Manhattan: She’s off to interview a famous director for an assignment; he’s starring in his friend’s “modern film noir classic†(read: student film?). Things go awry, and quickly. Chalamet ends up French-kissing Selena Gomez; Fanning gets caught up in a love triangle with not one, not two, but three men, all of them twice her age.
A Rainy Day in New York was originally set for release in 2018, but amid the #MeToo movement, renewed attention to allegations that Allen sexually abused his daughter Dylan Farrow caused Amazon to shelve the film indefinitely. During that time, multiple actors who’d acted in Allen’s films — including Chalamet — said they regretted working with the director, and that they would donate their salaries from his movies to charity. (Jude Law described it as “a terrible shame†that the movie was shelved.) In the company’s response to Allen’s suit, it said the movie was impossible to market because Allen’s own public comments “sabotaged†their partnership, and the refusal of top talent to work with or be associated with Allen made the deal “impracticable.â€
Nevertheless, A Rainy Day in New York persists. Per People, the movie will be released in French cinemas on September 18.