Following a successful run at more than 20 festivals on the international circuit, Dan Mirvish‘s (Between Us, Bernard and Huey and a Slamdance Film Festival Co-founder) indie gem, the Watergate thriller/comedy 18½ is all set for a nationwide theatrical release from May 23 through Adventure Entertainment.
Helmed by Mirvish, from a screenplay by Daniel Moya (Killer Kate!, Rental), 18½’s superb ensemble cast is comprised of Willa Fitzgerald (“Reacher,” “Scream,” “The Fall of the House of Usher”), John Magaro (The Big Short, War Machine, Overlord), Vondie Curtis Hall (The Night House, “Daredevil”), Catherine Curtin (“Stranger Things,” “Werewolves Within”), Richard Kind (Argo, tick, tick… Boom!), Sullivan Jones (“The Gilded Age”), Alanna Saunders, Claire Saunders, and the legendary voices of Ted Raimi (Wishmaster, Spider-Man, Intruder), Jon Cryer (“Two and a Half Men”), and Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead, “Burn Notice”) as President Richard Nixon.
The film humorously retells the infamous gap in Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Taking place in 1974, the film revolves around a fictional transcriber for the White House who gets her hands on the only copy of the aforementioned 18-and-a-half-minute gap in Nixon’s Watergate tapes, but her attempts to leak the recording to the press are met head-on by hippies, swingers and nefarious forces.
In anticipation of the film’s imminent release, CinemaChords’ Howard Gorman sat down with the film’s leading actress, Fitzgerald (currently filming Mike Flanagan’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”), to discuss the film’s themes, the ’70s setting and how Mirvish and Moya went about creating a timeless and internationally relatable film despite it being set in a specific time and place.
Adventure Entertainment will release 18½ in cinemas in over 50 markets across North America from May 27, starting with Laemmle theaters in Los Angeles and expanding coast-to-coast on June 3, with the filmmakers in attendance for Q&As in all key markets.