As we shared the other day, Trent Reznor felt that composing the score for the Netflix hit BIRD BOX was a waste of time… And in a recent Revolver article, he also revealed the unfortunate news that the score he and collaborator Atticus Ross composed for the upcoming thriller THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW was scrapped entirely.
When the trailer for THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW was released earlier this month, I said that something would have to go terribly wrong if a movie that stars Amy Adams, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, Wyatt Russell, Brian Tyree Henry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Julianne Moore somehow turns out to be bad, but the film has actually had a somewhat troubled production.
Directed by Joe Wright from a screenplay by Tracy Letts, THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW is based on a novel by A.J. Finn (you can pick up a copy HERE) that was reportedly so "complex" that Fox execs felt they needed to hold a "really early" test screening to see if the adaptation would work for audiences. When the audience responded poorly because they found the film confusing, reshoots were scheduled.
The film tells the story of
an agoraphobic child psychologist who befriends a neighbor across the street from her New York City brownstone, only to see her own life turned upside down when the woman disappears and she suspects foul play.
Letts has said that his experience working on the project
kind of sucked. It was really hard. It took a long time. It was harder than I thought it was going to be. I read the book and I thought, oh this will make a good movie, I can do this job. And then I got into the weeds of it. I was like, oh shit, this is hard. And I was also working with a lot of producers, a director and they had a lot of notes and it was hard. Now I eventually wrote a movie that we were all pleased with. And we shot that film and we all looked at it and we were all pleased with it. And then they showed it to an audience in Paramus, New Jersey, and they didn’t like it. And so there have been some rewrites and re-shoots that I didn’t have anything to do with. So we’ll see what happens."
As a result of the reshoots and the film undergoing what Reznor calls a "transformation", it will no longer have the "avant garde" score he and Ross crafted for it. The composers chose to "bow out" and Reznor made sure to note that
there's no animosity on our end. It's frustrating when you did that much work and it's gone. And we were proud — and they were proud — of the movie that it was."
It's interesting to see that Letts and Reznor both felt the filmmakers were pleased with / proud of the movie THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW was before the reshoots. THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW is set to reach theatres May 15, 2020, so we'll find out then if the finished version is one that will go over well with audiences.